If you need predictable delivery and still need to request a reservation, you also use an integrated service policy. This example uses a controlled load service.
Situation
The Sales department reports problems that network traffic is not performing as they expected. Your company's iSeries™ server resides in a business-to-business (B2B) environment that requires predictable on demand business service. You need to provide predictable transactions to your customers. You want to give the sales unit a higher quality of service (QoS) for their ordering application during the busiest time of the day (between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.).
In the following figure, the sales team is within your private network. There are routers, enabled by ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP), along the traffic's path to the B2B client. Each R represents a router along the traffic's path.
Objectives
Controlled load service supports applications that are highly sensitive to congested networks, but are still tolerant to small amounts of loss and delay. If an application uses the controlled load service, its performance will not suffer as network load increases. Traffic will be provided with service resembling normal traffic in a network under light conditions. Because this particular application is tolerant to some delay, you decide to use an integrated services policy using a controlled load service.
Integrated service policies also require that, along the traffic's path, the routers are RSVP-enabled.
Prerequisites and assumptions
An integrated service policy is an advanced policy that can require substantial resource. Integrated service policies require the following prerequisites:
- RSVP-enabled applications
Because your server does not have any RSVP-enabled applications, you must write your own RSVP-enabled applications. To write your own applications, use the RSVP API, qtoq QoS socket APIs, or integrated service APIs.
- RSVP-enabled routers and servers along the network path
QoS is a network solution. If you are unsure if the entire network has RSVP capabilities, you can still create an integrated service policy and use a marking to give it some priority; however, priority cannot be guaranteed.
- Service-level agreement
You have a service-level agreement (SLA) with your ISP to ensure that the policies receive the requested priority. The QoS policy you create on the iSeries server enables traffic (in the policy) to receive priority throughout the network. The QoS policy does not guarantee the priority and is dependent on your SLA. In fact, taking advantage of QoS policies can give you some leverage to negotiate certain service-levels and rates. Use the service-level agreement link to find out more.
Note: If you are within a private network, an SLA is not required.