On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 12:51:39PM -0400, Deepak Jain wrote:
Everything drops packets if you fill the buffers...
Rate limiting vs Traffic Shaping is about intent and QoS in my experience.
There are some devices that attempt to control traffic without filling buffers, such as the PacketShaper range of products by Packeteer. The PacketShapers control performance of individual TCP sessions by modifying the window size advertisements in flight to simulate reactions to congestion conditions. I have used PacketShapers before. They can be very capable and useful boxes if matched to appropriate traffic/flow volumes (and if the applications responsible for the traffic being shaped are tolerant of the layering violations that the boxes engage in). Joe