| It is amazing how quickly this most sophisticated of | | | | ports we will get a long way towards ensuring smooth |
| networking technologies, the managed smart switch | | | | performance of our video streams for entertainment |
| technology is finding its way in the most sophisticated | | | | purposes, and glitch-free voice over the internet |
| homes and home offices. | | | | connections. |
| When you have more than one computer in the house, | | | | Simply restricting bandwidth on all but the video ports, |
| perhaps a media center computer, an Xbox, and even | | | | for instance, can assure that we will always have |
| the VoIP phone lines, then you are a candidate for a | | | | sufficient bandwidth available on the video streaming |
| managed smart switch. | | | | ports. However, while this may be sufficient most of |
| Why? Simply because, while on one hand, the | | | | the time, it may not be enough. |
| management of your home communication and | | | | Quality of Service, QoS, management |
| entertainment needs has become simpler, and all of it | | | | Sometimes bandwidth alone is not enough. When we |
| is happening over a single home network, that network | | | | have all the bandwidth we need for a video stream, or |
| traffic has in turn become more complicated and may | | | | especially for a VoIP phone conversations, but a single |
| need to be managed to improve the quality and | | | | packet is overly delayed, the quality of video, or the |
| performance, to the degree that using a simple, | | | | quality of the phone call will suffer. While some delay is |
| unmanaged, or dumb network switch is simply out of | | | | acceptable in video streaming if video buffers are |
| question. | | | | sufficiently large, a delay in a VoIP conversation will be |
| In this article we will cover two elements of most web | | | | noticeable immediately as there is no significant |
| managed smart switches that you can tweak to your | | | | buffering even possible without causing unacceptable |
| advantage. These are: Port bandwidth management | | | | delays. |
| and Quality of service management. While both of | | | | That is where QoS management feature comes in. |
| these elements may seem complicated to you, the | | | | You will find it on better web managed smart |
| simple web interface that is available will make it easy | | | | switches. What QoS feature does is it allows us to |
| for you to control both of these elements with a few | | | | assign priorities to our network packets. So, given the |
| clicks of the mouse. | | | | examples above, a VoIP packet would have the |
| Port bandwidth management | | | | highest priority, the video stream packet the medium |
| Managing your port bandwidth can be accomplished | | | | priority, and the other traffic regular priority. That way |
| with most web managed smart switches. Simply by | | | | we can assure not only sufficient bandwidth for the |
| managing the allowed maximal bandwidth of individual | | | | application but also low latencies or delays. |