QOS between 5300 switches works one way only

[rares potocean]

Hello,
here is the problem.
We have procurve switches (5308xl=central site and 5304xl=remote site), in 2 locations, they are connected through a DS3 (3mb/sec) on headoffice and a 2xDS1(2mb/sec) on remote site.
Both of the switches have IP priority set for 2 BCM nortel boxes. The qos worked fine on a ATM link (1mb).
Since we have switched to a ds network we have only problems with the remote site. The voice is breaking up a the remote site, when downloading or uploading files from headoffice,
but only on the remote site, the voice on the central site is clear
The provider asked us to enable rate-limiting on both switches.would this help?
Any ideas?Comments?

Thanks

[Matt Hobbs]

Is the traffic between the two sites routed? If so then you'd be better off setting a DSCP codepoint for these devices, and asking your provider if they can prioritise this codepoint on their devices.

At the moment, what I believe is happening is that even with the IP priority set, as soon as it reaches the provider equipment it is treated with the same priority as anything else. Since there is unequal bandwidth between the two sites it's much easier for the full link to be utilised on the remote site causing voice dropouts.

[rares potocean]

Thanks Matt.
The DSCP i think is set right? I'm a novice in switches. Here is the config , if you'd be so kind to have a look

ip default-gateway 192.168.0.254
ip routing
vlan 1
name "DEFAULT_VLAN"
untagged A1-A24,B1-B24,C1-C24,D1-D24,E1-E16,F1-F4
ip address 192.168.0.253 255.255.255.0
qos dscp 101110
ip igmp
exit
qos protocol IP priority 7
qos device-priority 192.168.0.2 dscp 101110
qos device-priority 192.168.0.3 dscp 101110
qos type-of-service ip-precedence
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.254
spanning-tree
ip ssh version 1-or-2
router rip
exit
vlan 1
ip rip
exit


.2 and .3 are bcms in our network
The whole network is a flat network (one subnet 192.168.0.x)

The provider is telling me their equipment is transparent for our switches. They use ANDA (EtherReach 2200 in both locations) that connect to my switches, and they say they do not have any option to prioritize the traffic :-(

Thanks

[rares potocean]

More, the provider is asking me to implement rate-limiting on both ends (cause of unequal bandwidth). How can I do that? is it gonna help?

Thanks
Rares

[Matt Hobbs]

Rate-limiting on the 5300's is ingress only, so I don't think it's going to help unless you rate limit all ports to 1-2% except for the nortel boxes (assuming 100Mbit clients).

This is going to affect regular LAN performance though so is not something I'd imagine you'd want to do.

I'd like someone else's opinion but this unequal bandwidth between the two sites may be hard to workaround.

With the 7000dl routers you'd have more options to control traffic in this type of scenario.

[Mohieddin Kharnoub]

Hi

DSCP is an end-to-end QoS, so what suggested before was correct, QoS travels across WAN links by setting the DSCP.

If your provider is acting transparent to you, you can try this:

Create a new Vlan for voice, and make the DSCP for Vlan1 low and for voice Vlan is high on both sides and test the voice quality along with file uploading or downloading.

This should work fine if your provider is transparent.

Good Luck !!!

[rares potocean]

Matt and Mohieddin.
we have tried even with vlans for voice. did not work.
we have noticed that we are not reaching the 2mb bandwidth limit in any case, but the voice still has dropouts.
So I think there is a problem with the provider's service.
Thanks for you input.