What exactly does QoS packet scheduler do? What are particular real reasons to keep it enabled?

Question

I know what is QoS and don't need general explanations of the term and opinions on what is "QoS packet scheduler" based just on its name. What I am looking for is information on what exactly does Windows "QoS packet scheduler" affect (I suspect it does nothing useful unless there is at least router-side support for its function). Do you happen to know?

Solution 1

Try this Microsoft KB on Windows XP Quality of Service (QoS) enhancements and behavior.
and this SevenForums discussion referring it.

From a recent article,

20% of your bandwidth is reserved only when QoS tasks are running. When no QoS task is running, by default you have access to 100% of your bandwidth. So by going forward with removing the 20% reserve, essentially you wouldn't be recovering all 20% of your bandwidth; you would be recovering the piece of the 20% that is wasted and unused when a QoS task is running.

All this basically says, you are on the right track not worrying about its effects.

Solution 2

It actually does something useful even without router support. It reserves outbound bandwidth for particular traffic streams and determines which packets the machine transmits based on their QoS bits.

Comments

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

If you know what QoS is, and what the QoS Packet Scheduler is, then it's unclear as to why don't you know what it will "affect"? It affects network traffic. Having it enabled will probably affect system resources in some way. Your question is a little vague. :)