Differentiated services or DiffServ is a computer networking architecture that specifies a simple and scalable mechanism for classifying and managing network traffic and providing Quality of service on modern IP networks.
- Can provide low-latency to voice or streaming media
- While providing simple best-effort service to non-critical services
DiffServ uses a 6-bit differentiated services code point (DSCP) in the 8-bit differentiated services field (DS field) in the IP header for packet classification purposes.