What happens when QoS is misconfigured?

• A. QoS automatically compensates.
• B. Voice/video may be treated as best-effort, causing poor quality.
• C. Network becomes faster.
• D. Security policies disable QoS.

Answer: (B)

Misconfiguring QoS removes the mechanism that gives real-time traffic like voice and video preferential treatment. Without proper classification, marking, and the right queuing and policing, real-time streams end up in the same queues as best-effort traffic. When the network experiences congestion, those packets endure higher latency and jitter, and some may be dropped, causing noticeable degradation in call clarity and video smoothness. QoS doesn’t automatically compensate for misconfiguration, nor does it make the network faster or override security policies. Proper QoS configuration is essential to preserve the quality of real-time communications during traffic peaks.