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The A to Z of wireless
Updated: Everything you need to know from A to Zigbee, and plenty in between...

By Natasha Lomas

Published: Tuesday 11 August 2009

Q is for Quality of service

Quality of service (QoS) in a wireless context means the guarantee of a minimum level of service for a wireless product or service. Any number of elements can make up QoS with things like bandwidth, jitter and error rate among the most common.

QoS is often used to make sure certain types of traffic receive sufficient priority on the network - VoIP or streamed multimedia content such as videoconferencing, for example.

With QoS, bandwidth can be guaranteed for such time-sensitive voice services on the network, while users with less real-time requirements can be made to wait.

Where QoS has been implemented on a wireless network someone could download a large presentation file, for instance, without degrading the quality of a teleconference.

802.11e - an approved amendment to the 802.11 wireless standard - has tackled QoS with a set of enhancements for wireless LAN applications designed to prioritise time-sensitive categories of traffic.