assured forwarding and drop precedence...

it is important to remember that less is more, or better, much like with stp, when it comes to assured forwarding and its corresponding drop precedence...

look at that great dscp table again...

within this table there is no explanation of the drop precedence, but we understand that drop precedence is implied in the af number itself...

in class selector 3 the af value for the first number is THE class selector...

af31, af32, af33

the second number defines the drop precedence; 1 is low, 2 is medium and 3 is high...

the drop precedence is lower or better, which means the lower number 1 has a low drop probability compared with 3 (high drop probability), and 2 is medium...

most likely the consideration will be made in favor of af31 for traffic defined by class selector 3...

notice these granular choices are not available for cs5, 6 and 7...

one last point... the higher the class selector, the higher the priority, so cs4 beats cs3, etc... but within the af, af31 is preferred over af33...

it goes both ways...