Your organization is experiencing poor audio quality during Microsoft Teams meetings due to network congestion. You decide to implement Quality of Service (QoS). Which DSCP value should you ensure is prioritized for audio traffic in the Microsoft Teams admin center and on your network hardware?
Trap 1: DSCP 0
Standard data traffic typically uses Best Effort delivery and does not receive specialized DSCP markings like 46. While this is the default state for most internet traffic, it fails to protect sensitive audio streams from jitter or latency during periods of high bandwidth utilization on the local network segments.
Trap 2: DSCP 34
This value is typically reserved for Video traffic rather than Audio traffic within a standard Microsoft Teams QoS configuration. While prioritizing video is important for visual clarity, audio is considered more mission-critical for communication, and using the wrong tag for audio would lead to suboptimal prioritization on the infrastructure.
Trap 3: DSCP 18
This specific marking is generally used for application sharing and screen sharing streams within the Teams ecosystem. While sharing content is important, these streams can tolerate slightly higher latency than voice traffic, so assigning this value to audio would result in lower priority than is required for clear speech.
- A
DSCP 0
Why it fails: Standard data traffic typically uses Best Effort delivery and does not receive specialized DSCP markings like 46. While this is the default state for most internet traffic, it fails to protect sensitive audio streams from jitter or latency during periods of high bandwidth utilization on the local network segments.
- B
DSCP 34
Why it fails: This value is typically reserved for Video traffic rather than Audio traffic within a standard Microsoft Teams QoS configuration. While prioritizing video is important for visual clarity, audio is considered more mission-critical for communication, and using the wrong tag for audio would lead to suboptimal prioritization on the infrastructure.
- C
DSCP 46
The DSCP 46 value corresponds to Expedited Forwarding and is the industry-standard marking used for audio streams in Microsoft Teams. By applying this specific tag, routers and switches prioritize these packets at the front of the queue, significantly reducing the delay and packet loss that typically degrade voice conversations.
- D
DSCP 18
Why it fails: This specific marking is generally used for application sharing and screen sharing streams within the Teams ecosystem. While sharing content is important, these streams can tolerate slightly higher latency than voice traffic, so assigning this value to audio would result in lower priority than is required for clear speech.