in the network nodes, for example during a session establishment phase. During the session it may monitor the achieved level of performance, for example the data rate and delay, and dynamically control scheduling priorities in the network nodes. It may release the reserved capacity during a tear down phase. A best-effort network or service does not support quality of service. An alternative to complex QoS control mechanisms is to provide high quality communication over a best-effort network by over-provisioning the capacity so that it is sufficient for the expected peak traffic load. The resulting absence of network congestion reduces or eliminates the need for QoS mechanisms. QoS is sometimes used as a quality measure, with many alternative definitions, rather than referring to the ability to reserve resources. Quality of service sometimes refers to the level of quality of service, i.e. the guaranteed service quality. High QoS is often confused with a high level of performance, for example high bit rate, low latency and low bit error rate. QoS is sometimes used in application layer services such as telephony and streaming video to describe a metric that reflects or predicts the subjectively experienced quality. In this context, QoS is the acceptable cumulative effect on subscriber satisfaction of all imperfections affecting the service. Other terms with similar meaning are the quality of experience (QoE), mean opinion score (MOS), perceptual speech quality measure (PSQM) and perceptual evaluation of video quality (PEVQ). History A number of attempts for layer 2 technologies that add QoS tags to the data have gained popularity in the past. Examples are Frame Relay, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) (a technique between layer 2 and 3). Despite these network technologies remaining in use today, this kind of network lost attention after the advent of Ethernet networks. Today Ethernet is, by far, the most popular layer 2 technology. Conventional Internet routers and network switches operate on a best-effort basis. This equipment is less expensive, less complex and faster and thus more popular than earlier more complex technologies that provide QoS mechanisms. Ethernet optionally uses 802.1p to signal the priority of a frame. There were four type of service bits and three precedence bits originally provided in each IP packet header, but they were not generally respected. These bits were later re-defined as Differentiated services code points (DSCP). With the advent of IPTV and IP telephony, QoS mechanisms