This feature provides the ability to configure traffic shaping on the basis of a percentage of bandwidth available on an interface, and it allows you to specify burst sizes in milliseconds. Configuring traffic shaping in this manner enables you to use the same policy map for multiple interfaces with differing amounts of bandwidth. That is, you do not have to recalculate the bandwidth for each interface or configure a different policy map for each type of interface.

To configure the QoS: Percentage-Based Shaping feature, you must define a traffic class, configure a policy map, and then attach that policy map to the appropriate interface.

In the MQC, the class-map command is used to define a traffic class (which is then associated with a traffic policy). The purpose of a traffic class is to classify traffic.

The MQC consists of the following three processes:

• Defining a traffic class with the class-map command.
• Creating a traffic policy by associating the traffic class with one or more QoS features (using the policy-map command).
• Attaching the traffic policy to the interface with the service-policy command.

A traffic class contains three major elements: a name, a series of match commands, and, if more than one match command exists in the traffic class, an instruction on how to evaluate these match commands (that is, match-all or match-any). The traffic class is named in the class-map command line; for example, if you enter the class-map cisco command while configuring the traffic class in the CLI, the traffic class would be named "cisco".

The match commands are used to specify various criteria for classifying packets. Packets are checked to determine whether they match the criteria specified in the match commands. If a packet matches the specified criteria, that packet is considered a member of the class and is forwarded according to the QoS specifications set in the traffic policy. Packets that fail to meet any of the matching criteria are classified as members of the default traffic class.

Cisco IOS XE quality of service (QoS) offers two kinds of traffic regulation mechanisms--traffic policing and traffic shaping. A traffic policer typically drops traffic that violates a specific rate. A traffic shaper typically delays excess traffic using a buffer to hold packets and shapes the flow when the data rate to a queue is higher than expected.

Traffic shaping and traffic policing can work in tandem and can be configured in a class map. Class maps organize data packets into specific categories ("classes") that can, in turn, receive a user-defined QoS treatment when used in policy maps (sometimes referred to as "service policies").

Before this feature, traffic policing and traffic shaping were configured on the basis of a user-specified amount of bandwidth available on the interface. Policy maps were then configured on the basis of that specific amount of bandwidth, meaning that separate policy maps were required for each interface.

This feature provides the ability to configure traffic policing and traffic shaping on the basis of a percentage of bandwidth available on the interface. Configuring traffic policing and traffic shaping in this manner enables customers to use the same policy map for multiple interfaces with differing amounts of bandwidth.

Configuring traffic policing and shaping on the basis of a percentage of bandwidth is accomplished by using the police (percent) and shape (percent) commands.

The purpose of the burst parameters (bc and be) is to specify the amount of traffic to anticipate under normal operating conditions before traffic is dropped or delayed. Setting sufficiently high burst values helps to ensure good throughput.

This feature allows you the option of specifying the committed (conform) burst (bc) size and the excess (peak) burst (be) as milliseconds (ms) of the class bandwidth when you configure traffic shaping. The number of milliseconds is used to calculate the number of bytes to be used by the QoS: Percentage-Based Shaping feature.

Specifying these burst sizes in milliseconds is accomplished by using the bc and be keywords (and their associated arguments) of the shape (percent) command.

1.    enable

2.    configure terminal

3.    policy-map policy-name

4.    class {class-name| class-default}

5.    shape {average | peak} percent percentage [be excess-burst-in-msec ms] [bc committed-burst-in-msec ms]

6.    end

1.    enable

2.    configure terminal

3.    interface type number

4.    pvc [name] vpi / vci [ilmi | qsaal | smds]

5.    service-policy {input| output} policy-map-name

6.    end

1.    enable

2.    show class-map [class-map-name]

3.    show policy-map interface interface-name

4.    exit

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