A traffic shaping policy is defined by average bandwidth, peak bandwidth, and burst size. You can establish a traffic shaping policy for each port group and each distributed port or distributed port group.
ESXi shapes outbound network traffic on standard switches and inbound and outbound traffic on distributed switches. Traffic shaping restricts the network bandwidth available on a port, but can also be configured to allow bursts of traffic to flow through at higher speeds.
- Average Bandwidth
- Establishes the number of bits per second to allow across a port, averaged over time. This number is the allowed average load.
- Peak Bandwidth
- Maximum number of bits per second to allow across a port when it is sending or receiving a burst of traffic. This number limits the bandwidth that a port uses when it is using its burst bonus.
- Burst Size
- Maximum number of bytes to allow in a burst. If this parameter is set, a port might gain a burst bonus if it does not use all its allocated bandwidth. When the port needs more bandwidth than specified by the average bandwidth, it might be allowed to temporarily transmit data at a higher speed if a burst bonus is available. This parameter limits the number of bytes that have accumulated in the burst bonus and transfers traffic at a higher speed.
