What does 'QoS' stand for, and its primary purpose?

'QoS' stands for Quality of Service, and its primary purpose is to manage network resources effectively. Implementing QoS allows for the prioritization of certain types of network traffic, ensuring that critical applications receive the bandwidth and performance they require, even during times of congestion. This is especially important in environments where multiple applications compete for limited bandwidth, such as VoIP calls, video conferencing, and data streaming.

By managing network resources, QoS provides mechanisms that allow network administrators to set policies for different types of traffic, allocate bandwidth accordingly, and minimize latency, jitter, and packet loss. This ensures a consistent and reliable user experience, making it essential in maintaining the performance of real-time applications and overall network efficiency.