Rate Shaping Configuration Notes

Outbound rate shaping is a port-level feature that is used to shape the rate and control the bandwidth of outbound traffic on a port.

Rate shaping smooths excess and bursty traffic to the configured maximum limit before it is sent out on a port. Packets are stored in available buffers and then forwarded at a rate no greater than the configured limit. This process provides for better control over the inbound traffic of neighboring devices.

The following apply when configuring outbound rate shaping:

  • Outbound rate shaping can be configured only on physical ports, not on virtual or loopback ports.
  • RUCKUS ICX devices have one global rate shaper for a port and one rate shaper for each port priority queue. Rate shaping is done on a single-token basis, where each token is defined to be 1 byte.
  • When outbound rate shaping is enabled on a port on an IPv4 device, the port QoS queuing method (qos mechanism ) will be strict mode. This applies to IPv4 devices only. On IPv6 devices, the QoS mechanism is whatever method is configured on the port, even when outbound rate shaping is enabled.
  • You can configure a rate shaper for a port and for the individual priority queues of that port. However, if a port rate shaper is configured, that value overrides the rate shaper value of a priority queue if the priority queue rate shaper is greater than the rate shaper for the port.
  • You can configure rate shaping on individual ports of the link aggregation group (LAG). You cannot configure rate shaping on the LAG itself.
  • You can enable rate shaping on the individual ports for static and dynamic LAG. You cannot enable rate shaping on any other type of LAG (for example, keepalive).
  • You cannot configure rate shaping on devices where cut-through mode is configured. If cut-through mode is configured, you must first configure the store-and-forward command to change the method to store-and-forward.
    Note: You must save the configuration and reload for the change to take effect. Refer to the description of the store-and-forward command for more information.
  • When rate-limit output shaping is configured on a port, the traffic going out of this port is rate-limited, so traffic statistics on this port will show the rate-limited traffic.

The configured rate shaping values are rounded up to the nearest multiples of minimum values supported on the platform. The following table shows the minimum and maximum values for output rate shaping on various devices. Values are in kilobits per second (Kbps) for all the platforms.

Output Rate Shaping on ICX Devices

Device Module Minimum Maximum
ICX 8200 10 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 10,000,000 Kbps
ICX 8200 1 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 999,936 Kbps
ICX 8100 1 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 999,936 Kbps
ICX 7850 25 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 25,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7850 40 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 40,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7850 100 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 100,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7850 10 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 10,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7650 1 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 999,936 Kbps
ICX 7650 10 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 10,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7650 40 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 40,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7650 100 Gbps ports 8 Kbps 100,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7550 1 Gbps 8 Kbps 999,936 Kbps
ICX 7550 10 Gbps 8 Kbps 10,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7550 25 Gbps 8 Kbps 25,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7550 40 Gbps 8 Kbps 40,000,000 Kbps
ICX 7550 100 Gbps 8 Kbps 100,000,000 Kbps
Parent topic: Rate Shaping