IP Multicast (IGMP) interaction with QoS

IGMP high-priority-forward causes the switch to service the subscribed IP multicast group traffic at high priority, even if QoS on the switch has relegated the traffic to a lower priority. This does not affect any QoS priority settings, so the QoS priority is honored by downstream devices. However, QoS does take precedence over IGMP normal-priority traffic.

The switch’s ability to prioritize IGMP traffic for either a normal or high priority outbound queue overrides any QoS criteria, and does not affect any 802.1p priority settings the switch may assign. For a given packet, if both IGMP high priority and QoS are configured, the QoS classification occurs and the switch marks the packet for downstream devices, but the packet is serviced by the high-priority queue when leaving the switch.