Cisco puts graphical face on QoS

Cisco this week announced delivery of Quality of Service (QoS) policy management software that, the company claims, makes networks aware of the applications running over them.

Cisco QoS Policy Manager Version 1.0 enables centralized control and automated employment of application performance policies, Cisco says. It uses existing Cisco IOS 12.0 QoS mechanisms in Cisco LAN/WAN switching to differentiate handling of business applications, voice traffic and multimedia services.

Cisco QoS Policy Manager includes a graphical user interface for defining traffic classification and QoS enforcement policies. It also reports on policy validation and errors once they are downloaded onto network devices.

Cisco claims QoS Policy Manager eliminates tedious and error prone device-by-device configuration of QoS intelligence in switches and routers, which is usually done through the IOS Command Line Interface. Some users suggest that's all that QoS Policy Manager is - a slick, graphical front end to the IOS CLI.

"It's making administering the current capabilities much easier and more centrally manageable," says Adam Schoenfeld, a vice president at Merrill Lynch in New Jersey. "But we didn't see some of the new features that we had discussed (with Cisco) but they're coming."

Some of those new features include defining and administering QoS policies based on IP address ranges and user profiles, Schoenfeld says. Merrill is working with Cisco and Microsoft both individually and within the context of the Directory Enabled Networking initiative to make that happen.

Schoenfeld says QoS Policy Manager also has programmatic interfaces that let him adjust policies if network or application characteristics change.

"There is some positive aspects to (QoS Policy Manager) but it's not quite the number of features we were expecting... Its capabilities are still somewhat rudimentary," he says.

Cisco QoS Policy Manager has a list price of $25,000 and is available now.