Reference Guide

Displaying WRED Drop Statistics
To display WRED drop statistics, use the following command.
● Display the number of packets that the WRED profile drops.
EXEC Privilege mode
show qos statistics
Dell# show qos statitstics wred-profile
WInterface Te 0/49
Drop-statistic Dropped Pkts
Green 51624
Yellow 51300
Out of Profile 0
Explicit Congestion Notification
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) enhances and extends WRED functionality by marking packets for later transmission
instead of dropping them when a threshold value is exceeded. Use ECN for WRED to reduce the packet transmission rate in a
congested, heavily-loaded network.
While WRED drops packets to indicate congestion, ECN marks packets instead of dropping them when the average queue
length exceeds the threshold value. ECN provides an improved method for congestion avoidance by allowing the switch to mark
packets for later transmission rather than dropping them from a queue.
ECN uses a two-bit ECN-specific field in the IP header to indicate if a packet is ECN-capable, if the endpoints in the transport
protocol are ECN-capable, and if there is network congestion.
When ECN for WRED is enabled, if the queue length is between the minimum threshold and the maximum threshold, one of the
following actions is taken:
● If the WRED drop precedence determines that the packet should be dropped but the ECN field in the packet header
indicates that the endpoints are ECN-capable, the packet is marked with a congestion-experienced (CE) bit and transmitted.
● If the ECN field indicates that both endpoints are not ECN-capable, the packet can be dropped according to the configured
WRED drop precedence.
● If the ECN field indicates a network congestion condition, the packet is marked with a congestion-experienced (CE) bit and
then transmitted.
If the queue length falls below the minimum threshold or exceeds the maximum threshold, the same WRED treatment is applied
as when ECN is not enabled:
● If queued packets fall below the minimum threshold, they are transmitted.
● If queued packets exceed the maximum threshold, they are dropped.
ECN Packet Classification
When ECN for WRED is enabled on an interface, non-ECN-capable packets are marked as green-profiled traffic and are subject
to early WRED drops. For example, TCP-acks, OAM, and ICMP ping packets are non-ECN-capable. However, it is not desirable
for these packets to be WRED-dropped. You can use ECN match criteria in an ingress class map or an ACL to classify ECN-
capable and non-ECN-capable packets and apply the appropriate color-based WRED action.
Standard and extended IPv4 ACLs support the use of the 2-bit ECN field in packet headers as L3 deny/permit criteria for IP,
TCP, UDP, and ICMP packets. Enter the keyword ecn in a deny/permit statement to mark ingress traffic according to its ECN-
capability or non-capability. You can specify DSCP and ECN classifiers in the same ACL entry in an IP standard or extended ACL.
In a match-any class map, you can mark selected ECN/non-ECN traffic for yellow handling by entering set-color yellow in any
of the following L3 match commands:
● match ip access-group
● match ip dscp
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Quality of Service (QoS)