QoS questions SG200

[maxhodges]

If I don't have any VOIP devices, should I just leave all the QoS settings to default? We have an AirPlay speaker on our network, so could there be benefits in raising the QoS priority so that the audio streams smoothly to this device?

Cheers,
Max

[Max Harbin · Accepted solution]

Hi Max,

Max here. If the AirPlay speaker and source of music is running on your data VLAN, you could possibly see improvement. A lot of this depends on your environment. (Type of Data, importance of that data, and the other network equipment in use. Is the Airplay wired or wireless? Another thing you could do is isolate the source and speaker on a newly created "music" VLAN and it would not interfere with or be impeded by other traffic. Just food for thought.

[Tom Watts · Accepted solution]

Hi MaxHodges, the default QoS will apply to only tag VLAN packet from 802.1p. Otherwise the traffic is treated first in first out basis and switching at hardware speed.

Unless you have a significant amount of traffic that causes congestion there shouldn't be any problem. Separating traffic on a VLAN may logically separate the packets but it wouldn't separate the physical wire usage. So if everything is working as intended then there shouldn't be any need to do anything.

If you are experiencing problems with things like choppiness, you may want to troubleshoot from a congestion point of view such as removing all other traffic off the link and see if its clear or continues to have a problem. At that juncture, if you determine that with additional traffic load causes a problem then it may be prudent to think about a VLAN or reducing the amount of traffic on the un-aggregated link or possibly adding another uplink in to your network.

If the choppiness/quality doesn't clear with just your music box going then chances are it's not the switch or if it's the switch then it'd likely be a wiring issue or doubtfully the switch itself being flaky.

[maxhodges]

Thanks Tom! Helpful stuff.


We have some choppiness when it was connected over wifi, so I switched the speaker to a ethernet cable (direct to switch) and that seems to have solved the problem. So maybe the crux of the problem was related to poor connection or congestion on the wi-fi access point.

So the QoS features are mostly just for VOIP or maybe some video streaming device (net attached camera?) and I can ignore them for my current environment?