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DEMO: Wireless QoS

Wireless LAN controllers support Quality of Service (QoS) configurations that assign traffic priority levels—Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze—to different wireless networks. This allows sensitive traffic like voice and video to be prioritized over lower-priority data during periods of network congestion.

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About this video

Quality of Service (QoS) is a mechanism on wireless LAN controllers that allows administrators to define traffic priority at the wireless network level, ensuring that the most sensitive data flows are protected during periods of high demand. Rather than treating all traffic equally, QoS enables the controller to make intelligent forwarding decisions based on the assigned priority tier of each wireless LAN. This is particularly valuable for environments that carry both latency-sensitive communications and routine background data across shared wireless infrastructure. The QoS configuration on a wireless LAN controller typically presents four priority tiers. Platinum represents the highest priority and is recommended for voice traffic, which is highly sensitive to delay and packet loss. Gold is suited for video traffic, which also requires consistent throughput and low latency. Silver operates as a best-effort tier for general-purpose traffic, while Bronze handles low-priority background traffic such as network management, allowing it to transmit whenever resources are available. These priority levels only become consequential when the network experiences congestion. Under normal, unconstrained conditions, all traffic flows without intervention. When demand exceeds available capacity, the controller uses QoS tier assignments to determine which traffic to serve first, ensuring that a voice VLAN configured at Platinum, for example, will be forwarded ahead of traffic on Silver or Bronze networks. Isolating sensitive traffic onto its own dedicated wireless network and assigning the appropriate QoS tier is a straightforward and effective strategy for maintaining service quality in congested wireless environments.

What you'll learn

Configure QoS priority levels on a Cisco Wireless LAN Controller to prioritize traffic types such as voice, video, and best-effort across wireless networks
Distinguish between the four WLC QoS profiles — Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze — and identify the appropriate traffic types for each

What's covered

QoS on Wireless LAN Controller

Why QoS Matters
- Voice traffic prioritization
- Separate wireless network
- Congestion triggers priority
Accessing QoS Settings
- Wireless LAN tab
- Select a wireless LAN
- QoS tab
QoS Priority Levels
- Platinum — voice
- Gold — video
- Silver — best effort
- Bronze — background
How Priority Works
- Higher level overrides lower
- Active during congestion

Aligned to

Cisco CCNA

4.7 Explain the forwarding per-hop behavior (PHB) for QoS

2.9 Interpret the wireless LAN GUI configuration for client connectivity

Key terms

Quality of Service: A set of techniques used to manage network traffic by classifying, marking, and prioritizing certain data types to ensure consistent performance for latency-sensitive applications such as voice and video. QoS mechanisms include traffic shaping, queuing, and policing applied at each network device.
Wireless LAN Controller: A network device that provides centralized management of multiple lightweight wireless access points, handling functions such as client authentication, roaming, radio frequency management, and security policy enforcement. WLCs communicate with APs using CAPWAP and allow network-wide wireless configuration from a single management point.
Virtual LAN: A logical grouping of network devices that behave as if they are on the same network regardless of physical location.
Bandwidth: The maximum rate of data transfer across a network path, typically measured in bits per second.
Latency: The time delay between sending a request and receiving a response over a network.

Topics

Wireless Networking Quality Of Service Cisco Wlc Wlan Traffic Prioritization Network Congestion

Transcript

Prioritizing Wireless Traffic

There are times when some of our traffic needs to be prioritized over other traffic. An example of this is our voice VLAN traffic — our voice traffic needs to be prioritized over other traffic. So what we could do is put that voice traffic across a separate wireless network and then prioritize that wireless network.

The Quality of Service Settings

What I'm going to do to view these settings is go under the wireless LAN tab, and I'm going to select one of the wireless LANs. We're just taking a look, we're not going to actually set anything here, so I can choose anyone. I'm going to choose the exact Wireless so 2 on here, and under here I'm going to click on the QoS tab.

Under the QoS tab I have this quality of service, or QoS. You can see that it's set to silver right now, with best effort. So I'm going to click on the down arrow, and this is the part that you most need to be concerned with, the different settings within here.

If I want to prioritize this higher, I would go to gold or platinum. If I want to prioritize it lower, then it goes to bronze. And it gives us a little hint on what this is generally used for. For instance, platinum can be used for voice, because voice traffic is some of the more sensitive traffic that we have. Or gold is video, because video is going to be also fairly sensitive. Then we have silver, which is just best effort. And then bronze, which is just in the background — it doesn't matter, it can catch up whenever it needs to catch up. Possibly some of our management traffic would fall under the bronze category.

So you can see that we can set the level of priority, and if we were to select platinum, or voice, for this network, then the traffic that's coming into this network would be prioritized above traffic that would be in gold or silver.

Where this really comes into play is when there's contention on the resources. So when there is congestion, or there's extra traffic and it needs to prioritize traffic, that's when it chooses platinum. If it was always up to date and never behind, then it would never have to make a selection on which traffic it prioritizes. But in this case right here, if we were to choose platinum, it would prioritize that traffic in the case when there was congestion on the network.

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