From the course: Network Quality of Service (QoS) Foundations: Managing Network Traffic

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Software queues and hardware queues

Software queues and hardware queues

From the course: Network Quality of Service (QoS) Foundations: Managing Network Traffic

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Software queues and hardware queues

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- [Instructor] Let's dive into the concept of software queues and hardware queues. First, imagine the network traffic as cars approaching a toll booth. Just like cars need to wait in line at the booth, packets wait in queues to be processed by the router. But there is a key difference in how these queues work depending on whether we are talking about software or hardware queues. Software queues exist at the higher level where the router or switch CPU is actively involved. Think of this as the toll operator manually processing each car. The software queues handle things like traffic shaping congestion management, and applying advanced QoS policies. They are highly customizable, allowing us to implement queuing strategies such as weighted fair queuing, or WFQ, or low-latency queuing, or LLQ, to ensure important traffic gets priority. On the other hand, hardware queues operate at the physical interface level. This is more like an automated toll booth where cars are processed much faster…

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