Shoretel VOIP QOS, auto or policy

[thoffman]

We are preparing to evaluate a Shoretel VOIP system. I was wondering about QOS, what is the easiest /best setup is for a none Cisco phone: Auto QOS or policy/profile? I will be using LLDP. The design will use 2960s-48 POE flexstack switches and 4506-e collapsCORE. The user PC will connect to the phone thus the uplink from the phone to the 2960s will have both data and voice.

Thanks

[thoffman]

Tom,

A few things that I found to help my setup incase you are still having problems.  This is on a Gig user switch 2960s.  I run a little different setup on a the 100/full user links.

Trunk or switch uplink (port-channel)

 srr-queue bandwidth share 5 5 5 85
 priority-queue out
 mls qos trust dscp
 

Port that connects to phone and pc

 network-policy 91
 switchport access vlan 101
 switchport mode access
 no logging event link-status
 speed 1000
 duplex full
 srr-queue bandwidth share 10 10 60 20
 queue-set 2
 priority-queue out
 no snmp trap link-status
 mls qos trust dscp

Global config changes to QOS

mls qos queue-set output 1 buffers 10 10 10 70
mls qos queue-set output 2 buffers 16 10 13 61                                                                        mls qos queue-set output 1 threshold 4 3200 3200 100 3200

ShoreTel gear on vMware

I discovered the HQ, DVS, ECC did not mark traffic correctly and we had to write a policy for that on the server.

[jlhainy]

I am getting ready to do the same thing.  I have a mix of 4500s, 2960s, 3560's and 6500s.  When running auto qos on the different switching platforms, I am seeing different outputs and its a little confusing.  For example, on a 4500, I see the policy map and the policy map applied to the interface I run autoqos on, but I don't the the policy map on a 6500 or a 3750.  Not sure why.

[Terry Cheema]

The different platforms have different way of doing QoS. Its very much platform specific, hence the reason you are seeing this difference.

Refer this document for a highl level view of the LAN QoS:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/WAN_and_MAN/QoS_SRND_40/QoSCampus_40.html

You can also visit Cisco.com and search document for each platform, which will detail even further, if needed.

-Terry

[jlhainy]

That was quite the document.

One thing that caught my eye was the dynamic QoS in conjunction with CDP.  I understand all of the concepts, but a ShoreTel phone doesn't use CDP, it uses LLDP.  Can we do something similar with the network policy TLV and make it so that when you apply an auto qos voip trust to an interface, that it won't blindly trust anything without the LLDP verfication, much like CDP?

[thoffman]

I have not fully rolled out the Shoretel director/ECC but have connected the phones to the 2960s poe switch. It is working with LLDP thus fare.  I will not be able to fully test for another several weeks    The config I posted at the top of this chat is what I used.  LLDP does take the place of CDP

[jlhainy]

My config is very similar to yours.  I would like to refer to yours just to spark some discussion and understanding. My comments of my understanding of these commands are in bold.

lldp run      (enables lldp, which is required for shoretel phones)

!

no lldp tlv-select power-management  (this is kind of interesting because I had to do this to get the lldp tlv network policy to work)

!

mls qos            (globally enables qos, is also applied when running auto qos)

!

network-policy profile 91  (default cos and dscp look to match shoretel)  (sets the dynamic voice vlan used inplace of the voice vlan command and cdp)

voice vlan 91

voice-signaling vlan 91

!

interface range g0/1-24

switchport access vlan 101

switchport mode access

speed 1000

duplex full

storm-control broadcast level 1.00

storm-control multicast level 1.00

storm-control action trap

priority-queue out

mls qos trust dscp                ( trust dscp markings)

auto qos voip trust                 (auto qos to set trust boundaries)

no cdp enable

network-policy 91                   (applies network policy to interface and permits the dynamic voice vlan usage for phone)

lldp med-tlv-select network-policy          (I didn't have to do this, this tlv seems to advertise by default)

spanning-tree portfast

My question is, when we apply the auto qos voip trust command and I see that you have specificed trust dscp, so I am assuming that you are only using dscp and not cos AND dscp, are we blindly trusting any device that is plugged into this interface?  That kind of worries me because I only want to trust the shoretel phones when they mark their packets, not anything that could mark its traffic and compromise the QoS infrastructure.

My interest is to apply a conditional trust as described here. 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/WAN_and_MAN/QoS_SRND_40/QoSCampus_40.html#wp1098633

But this example refers to CDP, not LLDP.  My question is, will LLDP behave the same way or will it behave with extra configuration or are we stuck with blindly trusting any device that is plugged into a port that is trusting dscp or cos?

[thoffman]

From my testing LLDP verfication, much like CDP.. If you connect a PC to that port without a phone it will not blindly trust