A token bucket is a formal definition of a rate of transfer. It has three components: a burst size, a mean rate, and a time interval (Tc). Although the mean rate is generally represented as bits per second, any two values may be derived from the third by the relation shown as follows:

mean rate = burst size / time interval

Here are some definitions of these terms:

• Mean rate--Also called the committed information rate (CIR), it specifies how much data can be sent or forwarded per unit time on average.
• Burst size--Also called the Committed Burst (Bc) size, it specifies in bits (or bytes) per burst how much traffic can be sent within a given unit of time to not create scheduling concerns. (For a shaper, it specifies bits per burst; for a policer, it specifies bytes per burst.)
• Time interval--Also called the measurement interval, it specifies the time quantum in seconds per burst.

By definition, over any integral multiple of the interval, the bit rate of the interface will not exceed the mean rate. The bit rate, however, may be arbitrarily fast within the interval.

A token bucket is used to manage a device that regulates the data in a flow. For example, the regulator might be a traffic policer or a traffic shaper. A token bucket itself has no discard or priority policy. Rather, a token bucket discards tokens and leaves to the flow the problem of managing its transmission queue if the flow overdrives the regulator.

In the token bucket metaphor, tokens are put into the bucket at a certain rate. The bucket itself has a specified capacity. If the bucket fills to capacity, newly arriving tokens are discarded. Each token is permission for the source to send a certain number of bits into the network. To send a packet, the regulator must remove from the bucket a number of tokens equal in representation to the packet size.

If not enough tokens are in the bucket to send a packet, the packet either waits until the bucket has enough tokens or is discarded or marked down. If the bucket is already full of tokens, incoming tokens overflow and are not available to future packets. Thus, at any time, the largest burst a source can send into the network is roughly proportional to the size of the bucket.

Note that the token bucket mechanism that is used for traffic shaping has both a token bucket and a data buffer, or queue; if it did not have a data buffer, it would be a policer. For traffic shaping, packets that arrive that cannot be sent immediately are delayed in the data buffer.

For traffic shaping, a token bucket permits burstiness but bounds it. It guarantees that the burstiness is bounded so that the flow will never send faster than the token bucket's capacity, divided by the time interval, plus the established rate at which tokens are placed in the token bucket. See the following formula:

(token bucket capacity in bits / time interval in seconds) + established rate in bps = maximum flow speed in bps

This method of bounding burstiness also guarantees that the long-term transmission rate will not exceed the established rate at which tokens are placed in the bucket.

Traffic policing 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).

Traffic policing 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 (depending on where the traffic policy with traffic policing is configured) and is useful in managing network bandwidth when 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 that is entering the interface with Traffic Policing configured is placed in to one of these categories. Within these three categories, users can decide packet treatments. For instance, packets that conform can be configured to be transmitted, packets that exceed can be configured to be sent with a decreased priority, and packets that violate can be configured to be dropped.

Traffic policing is often configured on interfaces at the edge of a network to limit the rate of traffic that is entering or leaving the network. In the most common traffic policing configurations, traffic that conforms is transmitted and traffic that exceeds is sent with a decreased priority or is dropped. Users can change these configuration options to suit their network needs.

Regulating the packet flow (that is, the flow of traffic) on the network is also known as traffic shaping. Traffic shaping allows you to control the speed of traffic that is leaving an interface. This way, you can match the flow of the traffic to the speed of the interface receiving the packet.