traffic shaper
A traffic shaper is a hardware component that is used in wide- area networks and dynamically provides bandwidth to the user according to the traffic volume.
Traffic shaping involves adjusting the parameters of the traffic characteristics on the wide-area network.
Traffic shapers process the packet stream using a shaping algorithm. Common methods include TCP Rate Control, Class-Based Queuing( CBQ), Stream Based Shaping, Weighted Fair Queuing(WFQ) and Adaptive Weighted Fair Queuing( AWFQ). All algorithms use WAN parameters as a basis for calculation, such as line speed or error rate.