Networks police traffic by limiting the input or output transmission rate of a class of traffic based on user-defined criteria. Policing traffic allows you to control the maximum rate of traffic sent or received on an interface and to partition a network into multiple priority levels or class of service (CoS).
The Two-Rate Policer performs the following functions:
Limits the input or output transmission rate of a class of traffic based on user-defined criteria.
Marks packets by setting the IP precedence value, IP differentiated services code point (DSCP) value, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) experimental value, Quality of Service (QoS) group, ATM Cell Loss Priority (CLP) bit, and the Frame Relay Discard Eligibility (DE) bit.
With the Two-Rate Policer, you can enforce traffic policing according to two separate rates--committed information rate (CIR) and peak information rate (PIR). You can specify the use of these two rates, along with their corresponding values, by using two keywords,
cir and
pir, of the
police command.
The Two-Rate Policer manages the maximum rate of traffic through a token bucket algorithm. The token bucket algorithm can use the user-configured values to determine the maximum rate of traffic allowed on an interface at a given moment in time. The token bucket algorithm is affected by all traffic entering or leaving the interface (depending on the location of the interface on which the Two-Rate Policer is configured) and is useful in managing network bandwidth in cases where several large packets are sent in the same traffic stream.
The token bucket algorithm provides users with three actions for each packet: a conform action, an exceed action, and an optional violate action. Traffic coming into the interface with the Two-Rate Policer configured is assigned one of these categories. Within these three categories, users can decide packet treatments. For instance, packets that conform can be configured to be sent, packets that exceed can be configured to be sent with a decreased priority, and packets that violate can be configured to be dropped.
The Two-Rate Policer is often configured on interfaces at the edge of a network to limit the rate of traffic entering or leaving the network. In the most common configurations, traffic that conforms is sent and traffic that exceeds is sent with a decreased priority or is dropped. Users can change these configuration options to suit their network needs.
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Two-Rate Policer enables you to use Differentiated Services (DiffServ) Assured Forwarding (AF) Per-Hop Behavior (PHB) traffic conditioning. For more information about DiffServ, see the "Implementing DiffServ for End-to-End Quality of Service Overview" module.
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 Note |
Starting with Cisco IOS Release 12.1(5)T, you can police traffic by using the Traffic Policing feature (sometimes referred to as the single-rate policer). The Two-Rate Policer (available with Cisco IOS Release 12.2(4)T) is in addition to the Traffic Policing feature, and it provides additional functionality. For more information about the Traffic Policing feature, see the "Traffic Policing" module.
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