QoS and traffic shaping on LAN port/Stub network

Solved
dhayes2929
Here to help

QoS and traffic shaping on LAN port/Stub network

Hello All.  

   We have a stub network setup with routing rules using LAN ports on the Meraki.  One side is MX100 and the other is MX84.  The traffic is routing well using this method.  This stub network is dedicated to the connection between the locations.  It is a wireless internet transport connection via MPLS.  So one each side their MPLS gear plugs into a specific LAN port and we have a static route defined.  It works very well.  Note that this has nothing to do with the Internet connections on both sides (WAN1).  


The problem we have been having is Voip traffic passing through this point to point link.  The Voip provider has asked us to assign QoS tags between each site to prioritize traffic.  However, I am not finding where it is possible on the Meraki to do any traffic shaping on the LAN ports.  Am I missing something? 

 

Perhaps QoS tags need to be assigned on the managed network switches (not Meraki switches)?  

Thanks for any input.

Dave

1 Accepted Solution
jdsilva
Kind of a big deal

The MX will pass the tags through without modifying them by default, which from the sounds of things is what you want here. 

 

MX version 14.6 added a "real-time queue" for EF traffic. It works automatically and there's on configuration required on your part. There's more details in the release notes if you're interested.

 

Although, if you don't have any QoS handling from your MPLS provider than it doesn't matter anyway. Your VoIP provider can ask you to mark traffic, but if your MPLS provider just ignores them then you're no better off.

View solution in original post

5 Replies 5
jdsilva
Kind of a big deal

Generally speaking you want to mark traffic as close to the source as possible. So ideally you have the VoIP device mark it's own traffic, and then you "trust" those markings throughout your network. Failing that, you mark traffic on the ingress switch port the VoIP device is connected to (in your case, your non-Meraki switches).

 

I'm not clear if you can mark LAN to LAN traffic on an MX using a Traffic Shaping rule. Perhaps someone else can chime in on that part?  If you can you'll find it under Security appliance --> configure --> Traffic shaping and go right to the bottom of the page for traffic shaping rules. Might be easiest to use a layer 7 classification for voice, and then mark it to EF. 

 

 

Thank you for the response.  I did see the section to add traffic shaping rules.  However, it seems like those only apply to the WAN uplink ports.  It is unclear if that is the case or not.  If the rules were not confined to the WAN ports this seems like it would work.

 

It seems like getting the network to "trust" the tags is the way to go.  Will the Meraki side of things trust the tags by default?

 

Thanks again

Dave

jdsilva
Kind of a big deal

The MX will pass the tags through without modifying them by default, which from the sounds of things is what you want here. 

 

MX version 14.6 added a "real-time queue" for EF traffic. It works automatically and there's on configuration required on your part. There's more details in the release notes if you're interested.

 

Although, if you don't have any QoS handling from your MPLS provider than it doesn't matter anyway. Your VoIP provider can ask you to mark traffic, but if your MPLS provider just ignores them then you're no better off.

Thanks so much for your input.  I truly appreciate it!

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

@jdsilva is correct - you really want the VoIP system to mark its own packets.  I would be really surprised if it doesn't do this already.  What makes you think it is not already marking its own traffic?

 

Otherwise you'll probably need a Meraki switch to mark the traffic on ingress.

 

Can I also recommend you check out the Meraki VoIP deployment guide.

https://meraki.cisco.com/lib/pdf/meraki_whitepaper_msvoip.pdf

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