Priority Levels and QoS - Rule Processing

Introduction

Prioritization is used to assign a Quality of Service (QoS) for real-time network data. It gives a boost to important traffic by processing it before all other streams, providing low latency for time-sensitive applications such as VoIP, games and video.

Priority levels can be set for all rule types which makes it possible to implement QoS for any protocol including TCP, UDP and ICMP. It is also possible to set a low priority for non-essential services which can be useful to prevent bandwidth intensive applications from interfering with other network traffic.

Usage

Priority levels range from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest priority. Higher priority data is processed before streams with lower priority, effectively blocking those streams until it is finished sending or receiving.

The default level for new rules is 5 but can be changed at any time through the rule properties window. It is important to note that priority levels are relative, so a rule with a level of 3 will be processed before a rule with a level of 2. The exception to this is traffic that is not classified by any rule which is always given a priority level of 5.

User Interface

The Priority Level field is accessible through the properties window for the rule, under the processing tab:

Specifications