Best setup for QOS with Skype for Business Online

[Bobby]

Been doing research on setting up QOS for Skype for Business on Extreme XOS switches in a enterprise network. Trying to find the best route for this since it is sharing the same vlan as the data network (obviously). Any help, suggestions, or commands to set that up would be great. If it works in extreme networks.

[EtherMAN]

Reality check...Speaking as an ISP and network providor please remember all QOS markings and settings are dropped beyond your local network. It is good to have assurances that your VOIP traffic is clean and not congested on your LAN due to the bursty nature of our the typical applications people use each day, but once it goes through your firewall and out over the internet it is grouped and handled like any other traffic. So make sure you pay close attention to your internet connections and the gateways you are going to for SKYPE .... We run a pingplotter server specifically to be able to go back in time and see if specific hosted services changed BGP paths or increased latency or packet loss due things outside our control on the internet...

If you have factored this in then please excuse my chatter... I can tell you from experience alot of folks believe their QOS will be honored across a public internet connection between multiple carriers... It just is not so.

[Manny_Gutierrez]

Hi Bobby,

MS has information on optimizing networks for SfB:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Optimizing-your-network-for-Skype-for-Business-Online-b363b...

Although a bit dated the following Extreme guide has examples for configuring QoS on EXOS switches for SfB (formerly Lync)
http://learn.extremenetworks.com/rs/extreme/images/MicrosoftLync_ExtremeNetworks_Switches-SG.pdf

Basically by default most SfB clients mark voice packets with DSCP 46 (EF -Expedited Forwarding) and video packets with DSCP 34 (AF41 Assured Forwarding).
Here is an example config that prioritizes

create qosprofile QP4
create qosprofile QP6
configure diffserv examination code-point 34 qosprofile QP4
configure diffserv examination code-point 46 qosprofile QP6
enable diffserv examination port all

Of course any other traffic that is marked with these DSCP will also be prioritized. We do have an integration with MS Skype for Business via their SDN API (On-Premise) that includes automatically prioritizing only SfB calls by dynamically creating a policy during the call. However MS is still working on the API for SfB Online. More info on the integration can be found here:

http://www.extremenetworks.com/product/skype-for-business/

- Manny