User's Manual

Table Of Contents
Chapter 9 Quality of Service (QoS) 126
DSCP and Per-Hop Behavior
DiffServ defines a new DS (Differentiated Services) field
to replace the Type of Service (TOS) field in
the IP header. The DS field contains a 2-bit unused field and a 6-bit DSCP field which can define up
to 64 service levels. The following figure illustrates the DS field.
DSCP is backward compatible with th
e three precedence bits in the ToS octet so that non-DiffServ
compliant, ToS-enabled network device will not conflict with the DSCP mapping.
DSCP (6 bits) Unused (2 bits)
The DSCP value determines the forwarding behavior, the PHB (Per-Hop Behavior), that each packet
gets across the DiffServ network. Based on the marking rule, different kinds of traffic can be marked
for different kinds of forwarding. Resources can then be allocated according to the DSCP values and
the configured policies.