srr-queue commands - part III

Before i write about how traffic is allocated to queues, i realised there is another important piece to the srr queue puzzle. Namely how buffers are allocated and managed on the 4 srr queues.

This in itself appears to be a science best approached in a dark room!:-)

Buffers can be set up in advance and mapped to queue set in advance. 2 queue sets are available. An interface is then assigned to a queue set, thus applying the required buffers accordingly. By default an interface uses queue set 2.

An interface is assigned a queue-set as follows
config-if#queue-set 2
or
config-if#queue-set 1


As we know already there are 4 srr queues. A number of values can be set for each of these queues.

1) Buffer allocation
In percentage terms how much of the available interface buffer space is mapped to this queue. Allocation for the 4 srr queues must total 100%.

2) Buffer thresholds - of which there are 4
2 drop WTD (weighted tail drop) thresholds
1 reserved threshold
1 maximum threshold

First buffer allocation
mls qos queue-set {1-2} buffers {%1,%2,%3,%4}

e.g. mls qos queue-set 1 buffers 30 30 30 10
This sets the buffer allocation for srr queue 1 to 30%, queue 2 30%, queue 3 30% and queue 4 10%. N.B. if this command is not used the default allocation is 25% for each queue.

Second buffer thresholds
As mentioned there are 4 thresholds. If none are explicitly set then the following percentage defaults apply to the available buffer space:

queue 1 100 100 50 400
queue 2 200 200 50 400
queue 3 100 100 50 400
queue 4 100 100 50 400

e.g. for queue 1
100 wtd threshold 1
100 wtd threshold 2
50 reserved threshold
400 maximum threshold


So bringing the above alltogether in one example

mls qos queue-set output 1 buffers 30 20 30 20
mls qos queue-set output 1 threshold 1 40 60 100 200
mls qos queue-set output 1 threshold 2 40 60 100 200
mls qos queue-set output 1 threshold 3 40 60 100 200
mls qos queue-set output 1 threshold 4 40 60 100 200
int gi1/1
queue-set 1
i)srr buffer allocation for queues 1-4 is 30%,20%,30% and 20% respectively
ii)the srr queue thresholds are set identically for all 4 queues to 40%,60%,100% and 200%
iii) all the above config is applied to queue set 1, which is then applied to interface gi1/1

As mentioned at the start, when i first looked at this, it appears to be a another science in itself. I know i had to read the cisco doc at least a couple of times to get it straight - or maybe thats just me:-)