Traffic management is as important for wireless communications networks as it is for urban roadways. Businesses need reliable, consistent performance for everything from retail transactions and large file sharing to automated production and remote work.

Urban centers tackle road congestion with flow management (traffic lights) and physical separation (private highways). Wireless networks use similar tools: Quality of Service (QoS) and network slicing. Using them effectively is crucial as ever-greater demands are placed on wireless networks.

The core difference: Rules vs. architecture

The central difference between network slicing and QoS lies in their fundamental approach to managing high traffic:

  • Quality of Service (QoS) is a rules-based system that prioritizes certain traffic flows (like a voice call or a live stream) over others on a shared network infrastructure. It assigns a priority identifier (like a 5QI in 5G) to determine who goes first when the network is busy. However, since all traffic shares the same equipment, performance remains a "best effort" promise that can degrade severely during heavy congestion. A surge from one large user can slow down everyone else.
  • Network Slicing is an architectural framework that creates isolated, end-to-end virtual networks with their own dedicated and reserved network resources (bandwidth, processing power, memory). It's about physically separating the traffic. Heavy traffic in one slice cannot affect the performance of another slice, making it a more assured solution crucial for guaranteeing performance in Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The real advantage: Combining QoS and Network Slicing

While network slicing provides the necessary isolation and guaranteed resources, the ultimate level of performance and service differentiation is achieved when the two are used together. Network slicing fundamentally changes how QoS is implemented, moving it from a "best effort" priority system on a shared network to an enforced guarantee within a dedicated environment.

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Enhance traffic management with QoS and network slicing

QoS rules are designed to determine which type of traffic goes first when the network is busy. This rules-based system assigns a priority identifier (like a 5QI in 5G) to traffic flow, ensuring services like voice calls or streaming are managed with a higher priority than general browsing. However, without dedicated resources, all traffic shares the same equipment, meaning performance is a best effort promise that can degrade during heavy congestion. A surge from one large user can slow down everyone else’s data traffic.

Network slicing solves the problem of resource sharing by creating genuinely dedicated network environments. These are full, end-to-end virtual networks with their own reserved and separate network resources (bandwidth, processing power, memory). Heavy traffic in one slice cannot affect the performance of another slice. This makes network slicing a more assured solution, which is crucial for mobile network operators (MNOs) entering into guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs) with customers.

Combine QoS and network slicing with QoS Flow

While QoS rules alone cannot guarantee performance on a shared infrastructure, network slicing can be used to fundamentally change how QoS is implemented. A QoS Flow process operating inside a network slice allows certain network traffic to access dedicated resources, governed by the necessary QoS parameters to optimize performance within that slice. This flow management depends on two core components:

  • Fine-grained differentiation: A QoS Flow (identified by 5QI) sets precise rules for a specific application and enforces them in a dedicated network container. This level of granularity allows different apps on the same device to receive different, yet guaranteed, treatment.
  • End-to-end (E2E) enforcement: Network slicing is an end-to-end concept that spans the radio access network (RAN), transport, and core. The slice identity is communicated across the entire path, allowing the RAN to ensure the guaranteed resource allocation is maintained, making the QoS promise consistent from the device to the application server.

Enable mission-critical industrial use cases with both QoS and Network Slicing

The ability to provide guaranteed, isolated QoS is what makes network slicing a game-changer, enabling a wide array of mission-critical and high-demand services. Network slices can be defined by required performance characteristics or by provisioning requirements, giving MNOs more flexibility.

Service-based slice types include:

  • Ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC): This slice configuration is custom-built for extreme reliability and ultra-low-latency requirements (e.g., 99.999% uptime). The guaranteed QoS enables mission-critical applications like industrial automation, remote surgery, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication for autonomous vehicles.
  • Enhanced mobile broadband (EMBB): This slice configuration reserves high bandwidth and throughput for demanding consumer applications like 4K video streaming, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) in crowded public areas like stadiums.
  • Massive machine type communications (MMTC): This slice configuration is optimized for connecting a massive number of simple IoT devices. Use cases include smart city sensors, utility metering, and large-scale environmental monitoring, where reach and efficiency are prioritized over high data rates.

Different types of deployments can also affect how slices are managed, created, and maintained over time. These provisioning-based slices include:

  • Static network slicing: This method, also known as hard slicing, involves creating strictly isolated slices with resources that are pre-defined and permanently allocated. This approach is best suited for the most critical, long-term use cases like long-term deployments of industrial automation or national public safety networks where guaranteed, absolute performance is paramount, regardless of network load.
  • Dynamic network slicing: This uses a more flexible, automated approach where the slice can be created, scaled up or down, and retired on demand. Dynamic slicing, or soft slicing, allows resources to be shared more efficiently among different slices based on real-time demand. This is ideal for temporary services, such as live event coverage, virtual pop-up stores, or a corporation needing extra bandwidth for a short video conference.

Overdeliver on network performance with Inseego

The combination of a QoS rule operating within an isolated network slice is what allows today’s wireless networks to move beyond best-effort service to deliver the assured, reliable performance demanded by mission-critical applications.

Inseego wireless connectivity devices support both QoS and network slicing. As an industry-leader in 5G with numerous firsts, including the first mobile hotspot, Inseego delivers cutting-edge technologies ready for both the present and future connectivity needs of businesses, consumers, and enterprises. Inseego’s indoor routers, outdoor routers, and mobile hotspots deliver cutting-edge performance in urban, rural, and remote environments.

Combined with simplified device provisioning using the smartphone-friendly Inseego Mobile app, as well as remote management via the cloud-based Inseego Connect network and device management platform, Inseego devices make it easier than ever to get blazing-fast speeds virtually anywhere for all business communications traffic.

Contact us to learn how Inseego solutions can take your wireless network traffic performance to the next level.