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| 8.1 |  | Quality of Service Requirements |
| 8.1.7 |  | Quality of Service requirements for data |

Different applications, protocols and traffic types have different QoS requirements in terms of the amount of loss, latency and jitter they can tolerate. Recognizing these differences is an essential element in designing and configuring a network that delivers the required QoS.

When addressing the QoS needs of data application traffic, profile the applications to get a basic understanding of the network requirements. It is not necessary to over-engineer the provisioning of bandwidth, as some traffic can usually tolerate lower QoS levels. Instead, use the proven relative priority model to divide traffic into no more than four classes, such as:

- Gold (Mission-Critical) – Transactional and business software
- Silver (Guaranteed-Bandwidth) – Streaming video, messaging, and intranet
- Bronze (Best-Effort and Default class) – Internet browsing, e-mail
- Less-than-Best-Effort (Optional; higher-drop preferences) – FTP, backups, and applications (Napster, KaZaa)