Originally Posted by ilovetheusers
You can set up cisco devices (not sure but might be a router add on, not sure) so that one application or traffic gets service before another. I know where I work we wish we had it as PC's going to the internet wil often cause slow downs to devices accessing a telnet session and it causes all sorts of havok.
We have sites on our WAN with a 128k frame circuit where one dingus downloads a 40mb file and hoses up 20 terminals with telnet sessions. r, one doof uses internet radio utilizes bandwidth to the point where no one can log on to the remote servers.
To experiment with why you might want it put multiple file sharing machines on your network and let them upload and see how fast your regular internet browsing goes. It's awful. Turn off the file sharing machines and everything returns to normal.
You use them to ensure that the devices or applications that really need to use the circuit bandwidth really get what they need when they need it. Otherwise it's 1st come 1st serve.