QoS documentation, questions about ToS

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I’m in the process of clarifying bits of the wiki page on QoS. I’ve tried to understand this blog post by @ms, particularly concerning the changes to ToS. I have two questions:

  1. Is my interpretation (see below) accurate?
  2. If the answer to the first question is yes, should the Web User Interface (WUI) be updated to remove the option to modify ToS settings, or at the minimum be explained in the wiki?

My Interpretation: According to the blog post, Type of Service (ToS) bits are typically set by client applications, such as VoIP phones and Skype, to specify quality of service preferences like low latency or high throughput. The post indicates that IPFire’s QoS system no longer alters these ToS bits, as it was deemed unnecessary and CPU-intensive.

This suggests that ToS settings should be configured at the client or application level, rather than within IPFire’s QoS system.

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This normally happens automatically. Most VoIP desk phones and apps do this for example.

However, I believe that virtually nothing honours these in the real world, since it is too easy to abuse them. On your local network, it still might be useful to identify traffic that has certain requirements (e.g. low latency) and send it through first and then anything else. People who have a very small uplink might benefit from this.

However, as soon as packets leave the RED interface, I would assume that they are all being treated equally. Hence we dropped the ToS setting part.

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I will write a note in the wiki section with a link to the relevant part of your blog post.

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