QoS is critical to large enterprises. The multitude of complex businesses now on the Internet include retailers, stock trading services, brick and mortar companies with hundreds of branch offices, emergency planning agencies and hospital networks. Each requires high reliability, security, maximum uptime and fast network transactions through the public Internet. QoS appliances must address and automate these otherwise daunting configuration tasks. QoS may be even more critical to service providers and ASPs that must optimize and guarantee the performance of all parts of their networks.
Providers worldwide have several problems in common.
One is that data transmission takes an ever-larger bandwidth share while voice traffic still accounts for a large percentage of revenues. Service providers are looking for methods of reducing the stress on their networks caused by the continued use of voice lines to connect users with the ISP network. The converged network can solve such problems. However, providers must increase billable minutes by optimizing network efficiency in a multicarrier environment. Providers also want to retain customers, who may one day opt for more sophisticated and profitable services, by delivering on SLAs.