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Routing & Switching · Foundational

Shaping

A QoS action that buffers excess traffic to send it at a configured rate, smoothing bursts.

Definition

Shapers delay rather than drop, which suits outbound traffic toward a provider that polices at a lower rate than the physical link. Shaping introduces delay and jitter and applies outbound only. It is commonly combined with child queuing policies in hierarchical QoS.

Example

shape average 50000000 on a 1 Gbps link to a 50 Mbps WAN service

Exam tip

Shape outbound to the subscriber rate so the provider's policer does not drop your traffic.

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