QOS Labs?

pitviper

Looking for some good QOS labs but don't see an awful lot online. Does anyone know if the ONT Lab Portfolio book is any good? Any other resources that I should look at? Thanks!!

APA

Lab portfolio is worthwhile

I used it for ONT... and will probably use it for the QoS exam as well....

Just have to workaround the fact that it is written for netacademywho have access to cisco's IOS with the traffic generator built into it 'Paegent'

need to get my hands on that!

tmlerdal

when I was working on my QoS exam, I made some of my own labs up. Simplistic with 2 routers with a p2p link between them and a laptop on either side.

I'd setup an ftp or http server on the one laptop then use the client to actually generate some traffic. Could use ping in the middle to kind of simulate some voice type traffic. Was a little troublesome at times, but was enough to grasp the concepts.

pitviper

tmlerdal wrote:

when I was working on my QoS exam, I made some of my own labs up.

I started heading down the same path. Going to grab the ONT portfolio book too I think – Got a couple of 1760s setup with CME and several phones on each LAN (1x cat2950 on one side, 1x cat3550 on the other). I’m using a simulated ISP router (3640) in the middle so I can re-classify traffic as it passes though (they do it to me in real life so what the heck!) and create bottlenecks. That should cover RTP/RTCP traffic. On the LAN side I’m running Server 2003 VMs, one on each side (I have 5x NICs in the VM server each bound to a physical LAN). Guess I can run IIS for HTTP and FTP traffic – Any thing else? Thanks!

tmlerdal

Here is a demo lab I saw in a class once. Don't remember the full details.
On a webserver, setup a page that loads 2 graphics side by side. Same image, just 2 copies, one titled fast, one titled slow.

You can set it up so that the fast graphic loads twice as fast as the slow.

Gets more into the nbar stuff, but just a suggestion for a lab for you. I've been wanting to set this up again in an dynagen sort of scenario to use as a demonstration of what can be done with QoS.

pitviper

tmlerdal wrote:

Here is a demo lab I saw in a class once. Don't remember the full details.
On a webserver, setup a page that loads 2 graphics side by side. Same image, just 2 copies, one titled fast, one titled slow.

You can set it up so that the fast graphic loads twice as fast as the slow.

Gets more into the nbar stuff, but just a suggestion for a lab for you. I've been wanting to set this up again in an dynagen sort of scenario to use as a demonstration of what can be done with QoS.

Sweet! I like it - Going to set that up as well - Thanks!

dtlokee

You can also use IPerf to create traffic with QoS markings (DSCP and such)

pitviper

dtlokee wrote:

You can also use IPerf to create traffic with QoS markings (DSCP and such)

Cool - Thanks! I just download IPerf/JPerf - looks like it might be pretty good for generating various traffic types.

dtlokee

The trick will be figuring out the ToS values for Iperf. To do this take your DSCP value convert to decimal, multiply by 4 and convert to hex

for example:

(EF is 46 in decimal) * 4 = 184 - 0xB8 in hex. When you use iperf you need to enter this way.

pitviper

Hmmmm. I'm using the windows version and for some reason there is no TOS switch listed. It seems to accept "--tos" though. I'll have to give it a shot and see what actually happens.

dtlokee

I think it's -S, it's in the documentation on the website.

pitviper

dtlokee wrote:

I think it's -S, it's in the documentation on the website.

Got it (finally). I can't find it on the official website so I downloaded the source tar file and sure enough the doc is in there. Thanks!!!

-S, --tos # $IPERF_TOS The type-of-service for outgoing packets. (Many routers ignore the TOS field.) You may specify the value in hex with a '0x' prefix, in octal with a '0' prefix, or in decimal. For example, '0x10' hex = '020' octal = '16' decimal. The TOS numbers specified in RFC 1349 are:
IPTOS_LOWDELAY minimize delay 0x10
IPTOS_THROUGHPUT maximize throughput 0x08
IPTOS_RELIABILITY maximize reliability 0x04
IPTOS_LOWCOST minimize cost 0x02

dtlokee

Interesting, I thought it had to be in hex.

pitviper

OK, I finally finished setting up the rack for the QoS lab, topology below. It took forever to juggle the equipment in the rack (running out of space so I had to take some stuff out to make room) – that may have taken longer the actual config and connectivity testing! Going to start generating some traffic this evening – I’m psyched!

pitviper

Passed QOS today - 916/1000.

I have to say that this was honestly a tough one to practice on in the home lab. I got tired of setting up the various traffic generators each time so I ended up doing most of my playing on our production network over the weekend/late at night. It’s amazing how much garbage traffic there is to play with

dtlokee

Congrats on the pass!

Yes it can be fun to find all that less than deseriable traffic on the network and police it to 10kb/s and see who complains.

mamono

Congrats! I have worked with SmartBit traffic generators in the past, but currently don't have access to that equipment anymore. Would love to see a write up from someone that has incorporated some kind of freeware, open source, or IOS based traffic generators into their Cisco home labs.

mikej412

pitviper wrote: »

Passed QOS

Congratulations!

pitviper

Thanks guys! CVOICE is next. Shouldn't be too bad as I already read the book and watched most of the CBTs while studying for the CCNA:Voice (Started studying before the official CCNA:V book was released).