IPv6 packets are forwarded by paths that are different from those for IPv4. QoS features supported for IPv6 environments include packet classification, queuing, traffic shaping, weighted random early detection (WRED), class-based packet marking, and policing of IPv6 packets. These features are available at both the process switching and Cisco Express Forwarding switching paths of IPv6.

All of the QoS features available for IPv6 environments are managed from the modular QoS command-line interface (MQC). The MQC allows you to define traffic classes, create and configure traffic policies (policy maps), and then attach those traffic policies to interfaces.

To implement QoS in networks that are running IPv6, follow the same steps that you would follow to implement QoS in networks running only IPv4. At a very high level, the basic steps for implementing QoS are as follows:

• Know which applications in your network need QoS.

• Understand the characteristics of the applications so that you can make decisions about which QoS features would be appropriate.

• Know your network topology so that you know how link layer header sizes are affected by changes and forwarding.

• Create classes based on the criteria that you establish for your network. In particular, if the same network is also carrying IPv4 traffic along with IPv6 traffic, decide if you want to treat both of them the same way or treat them separately and specify match criteria accordingly. If you want to treat them the same, use match statements such as match precedence, match dscp, set precedence, and set dscp. If you want to treat them separately, add match criteria such as match protocol ip and match protocol ipv6 in a match-all class map.

• Create a policy to mark each class.

• Work from the edge toward the core in applying QoS features.

• Build the policy to treat the traffic.

• Apply the policy.

Once you have marked the traffic, you can use the markings to build a policy and classify traffic on the rest of the network segments. If you keep the policy simple (for example approximately four classes), it will be easier to manage. Class-based and flow-based queueing are supported for IPv6. The processes and tasks use the same commands and arguments to configure various queueing options for both IPv4 and IPv6.

Congestion management for IPv6 is similar to IPv4, and the commands used to configure queueing and traffic shaping features for IPv6 environments are the same commands as those used for IPv4. Traffic shaping allows you to limit the packet dequeue rate by holding additional packets in the queues and forwarding them as specified by parameters configured for traffic shaping features. Traffic shaping uses flow-based queueing by default. CBWFQ can be used to classify and prioritize the packets. Class-based policer and generic traffic shaping (GTS) or Frame Relay traffic shaping (FRTS) can be used for conditioning and policing traffic.