Rate Limiting

Rate limiting is used to control the rate of traffic entering (inbound) and/or leaving (outbound) a switch per CoS. Rate limiting allows for the throttling of traffic flows that consume available bandwidth, in the process providing room for other flows. Rate limiting guarantees the availability of bandwidth for other traffic by preventing the rate limited traffic from consuming more than the assigned amount of a network‘s resources. Rate limiting accomplishes this by setting a cap on the bandwidth utilization of specific types of both inbound and outbound traffic. On the S- and K-Series, when a rate limit has been exceeded, the CoS can be configured to perform one or all of the following: record a Syslog message, send an SNMP trap to inform the administrator, and automatically disable the port.

Rate Limiting Clipping Behavior illustrates how bursty traffic is clipped above the assigned threshold with rate limiting applied.