Quality of Service (QoS) is a set of technologies that work on a network to guarantee its ability to dependably run high-priority applications and traffic under limited network capacity. QoS technologies accomplish this by providing differentiated handling and capacity allocation to specific flows in network traffic. This enables the network administrator to assign the order in which traffic is handled, and the amount of bandwidth afforded to traffic.

QoS enables you to prioritize and manage network traffic to ensure critical applications and services receive the necessary bandwidth and resources.

Palo Alto Networks Application Quality of Service (QoS) provides basic QoS applied to networks and extends it to provide QoS to applications and users.

With QoS on PAN-OS, you can optimize network performance by defining QoS policies that classify traffic into different service classes, each with its own priority level and bandwidth allocation. QoS is especially useful in environments where network congestion can impact business-critical applications or where certain types of traffic require preferential treatment. You can leverage QoS to ensure that latency-sensitive applications like voice and video conferencing maintain high quality, while less time-sensitive traffic is appropriately managed. QoS policies allow you to match traffic based on various criteria such as applications, zones, addresses, users, and DSCP values, giving you granular control over how different types of network traffic are treated. By implementing QoS, you can improve overall network efficiency, enhance user experience for critical services, and align network resource allocation with your organization's priorities. With QoS, you can maximize the value of your existing network infrastructure while ensuring that your most important traffic always gets through, even during periods of high network utilization.

Use the Palo Alto Networks product comparison tool to view the QoS features supported on your firewall model. Select two or more product models and click Compare Now to view QoS feature support for each model (for example, you can check if your firewall model supports QoS on subinterfaces and if so, the maximum number of subinterfaces on which QoS can be enabled).

QoS on Aggregate Ethernet (AE) interfaces is supported on PA-7000 Series, PA-5400 Series, PA-5200 Series, PA-3400 Series, PA-3200 Series, PA-1400 Series, and PA-400 Series firewalls.