My question is such:

I want to control the bandwidth of my users and cap there speed on the network. I was told by a Cisco rep that it is better to police or control the bandwidth at the switch and not via the router. It that the correct place to control bandwidth at the switch or would it be better to control it at the router? Secondly, by policing or control the bandwidth via 802 QOS on a GIG switch will that also cap the speed of the individual ports on that GIG switch to the speed on the QOS settings? Example - I want the QOS setting on the switch to be capped at 256kbps and it is a GIG port. Will local traffic be transmitting at 256kbps and defeat the purpose of the GIG speed on the port. I hope that I said that in a way that is easily understood.



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Hello,

as with everything the issue with QoSing something is what exactly you want to achieve.

Do you want to limit the connection speeds to the LAN as well? If that's what you want, then the lower level 802 QoS is perfect. However if all you want is to limit the external connection you'll need a proper configuration or you'll end up with a LAN going at 256 kbps.

If you want to QoS only Internet traffic, then you need to consider QoS at an IP level. If your switches have the software, you might be able to do that on each switch. This will divide the load between each separate LAN, leaving your router to just route. If your switches do have that capability, it might be easier to do all the QoS at that level, that way you won't cap the LAN transmission speed, but you will cap the external connection quite easily.

However, if your switches don't have that software, your router will most probably have it. Depending on your router model and the amount of traffic you generate, QoSing might put a heavy load on it. Again, you'll QoS at IP level which is best, but you'll have to have a few test runs to see how the network and the router react to the extra processing.

I hope that helps a bit.

Good luck.

So you would recommend doing this at the switch level if it has the capability and if not then the router will have to suffice. This is all done through prioritizing traffic or QOS. I will have to look into this further. Many thanks