man/man8/tc.8

.TH TC 8 "16 December 2001" "iproute2" "Linux"
.SH NAME
tc \- show / manipulate traffic control settings
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B tc qdisc [ add | change | replace | link | delete ] dev
DEV
.B
[ parent
qdisc-id
.B | root ]
.B [ handle
qdisc-id ] qdisc
[ qdisc specific parameters ]
.P

.B tc class [ add | change | replace | delete ] dev
DEV
.B parent
qdisc-id
.B [ classid
class-id ] qdisc
[ qdisc specific parameters ]
.P

.B tc filter [ add | change | replace | delete ] dev
DEV
.B [ parent
qdisc-id
.B | root ] protocol
protocol
.B prio
priority filtertype
[ filtertype specific parameters ]
.B flowid
flow-id

.B tc
.RI "[ " FORMAT " ]"
.B qdisc show [ dev
DEV
.B ]
.P
.B tc
.RI "[ " FORMAT " ]"
.B class show dev
DEV
.P
.B tc filter show dev
DEV

.P
.B tc [ -force ] -b\fR[\fIatch\fR] \fB[ filename ]

.ti 8
.IR FORMAT " := {"
\fB\-s\fR[\fItatistics\fR] |
\fB\-d\fR[\fIetails\fR] |
\fB\-r\fR[\fIaw\fR] |
\fB\-p\fR[\fIretty\fR] |
\fB\-i\fR[\fIec\fR] }

.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Tc
is used to configure Traffic Control in the Linux kernel. Traffic Control consists
of the following:

.TP
SHAPING
When traffic is shaped, its rate of transmission is under control. Shaping may
be more than lowering the available bandwidth - it is also used to smooth out
bursts in traffic for better network behaviour. Shaping occurs on egress.

.TP
SCHEDULING
By scheduling the transmission of packets it is possible to improve interactivity
for traffic that needs it while still guaranteeing bandwidth to bulk transfers. Reordering
is also called prioritizing, and happens only on egress.

.TP
POLICING
Whereas shaping deals with transmission of traffic, policing pertains to traffic
arriving. Policing thus occurs on ingress.

.TP
DROPPING
Traffic exceeding a set bandwidth may also be dropped forthwith, both on
ingress and on egress.

.P
Processing of traffic is controlled by three kinds of objects: qdiscs,
classes and filters.

.SH QDISCS
.B qdisc
is short for 'queueing discipline' and it is elementary to
understanding traffic control. Whenever the kernel needs to send a
packet to an interface, it is
.B enqueued
to the qdisc configured for that interface. Immediately afterwards, the kernel
tries to get as many packets as possible from the qdisc, for giving them
to the network adaptor driver.

A simple QDISC is the 'pfifo' one, which does no processing at all and is a pure
First In, First Out queue. It does however store traffic when the network interface
can't handle it momentarily.

.SH CLASSES
Some qdiscs can contain classes, which contain further qdiscs - traffic may
then be enqueued in any of the inner qdiscs, which are within the
.B classes.
When the kernel tries to dequeue a packet from such a
.B classful qdisc
it can come from any of the classes. A qdisc may for example prioritize
certain kinds of traffic by trying to dequeue from certain classes
before others.

.SH FILTERS
A
.B filter
is used by a classful qdisc to determine in which class a packet will
be enqueued. Whenever traffic arrives at a class with subclasses, it needs
to be classified. Various methods may be employed to do so, one of these
are the filters. All filters attached to the class are called, until one of
them returns with a verdict. If no verdict was made, other criteria may be
available. This differs per qdisc.

It is important to notice that filters reside
.B within
qdiscs - they are not masters of what happens.

.SH CLASSLESS QDISCS
The classless qdiscs are:
.TP
[p|b]fifo
Simplest usable qdisc, pure First In, First Out behaviour. Limited in
packets or in bytes.
.TP
pfifo_fast
Standard qdisc for 'Advanced Router' enabled kernels. Consists of a three-band
queue which honors Type of Service flags, as well as the priority that may be
assigned to a packet.
.TP
red
Random Early Detection simulates physical congestion by randomly dropping
packets when nearing configured bandwidth allocation. Well suited to very
large bandwidth applications.
.TP
sfq
Stochastic Fairness Queueing reorders queued traffic so each 'session'
gets to send a packet in turn.
.TP
tbf
The Token Bucket Filter is suited for slowing traffic down to a precisely
configured rate. Scales well to large bandwidths.
.SH CONFIGURING CLASSLESS QDISCS
In the absence of classful qdiscs, classless qdiscs can only be attached at
the root of a device. Full syntax:
.P
.B tc qdisc add dev
DEV
.B root
QDISC QDISC-PARAMETERS

To remove, issue
.P
.B tc qdisc del dev
DEV
.B root

The
.B pfifo_fast
qdisc is the automatic default in the absence of a configured qdisc.

.SH CLASSFUL QDISCS
The classful qdiscs are:
.TP
CBQ
Class Based Queueing implements a rich linksharing hierarchy of classes.
It contains shaping elements as well as prioritizing capabilities. Shaping is
performed using link idle time calculations based on average packet size and
underlying link bandwidth. The latter may be ill-defined for some interfaces.
.TP
HTB
The Hierarchy Token Bucket implements a rich linksharing hierarchy of
classes with an emphasis on conforming to existing practices. HTB facilitates
guaranteeing bandwidth to classes, while also allowing specification of upper
limits to inter-class sharing. It contains shaping elements, based on TBF and
can prioritize classes.
.TP
PRIO
The PRIO qdisc is a non-shaping container for a configurable number of
classes which are dequeued in order. This allows for easy prioritization
of traffic, where lower classes are only able to send if higher ones have
no packets available. To facilitate configuration, Type Of Service bits are
honored by default.
.SH THEORY OF OPERATION
Classes form a tree, where each class has a single parent.
A class may have multiple children. Some qdiscs allow for runtime addition
of classes (CBQ, HTB) while others (PRIO) are created with a static number of
children.

Qdiscs which allow dynamic addition of classes can have zero or more
subclasses to which traffic may be enqueued.

Furthermore, each class contains a
.B leaf qdisc
which by default has
.B pfifo
behaviour, although another qdisc can be attached in place. This qdisc may again
contain classes, but each class can have only one leaf qdisc.

When a packet enters a classful qdisc it can be
.B classified
to one of the classes within. Three criteria are available, although not all
qdiscs will use all three:
.TP
tc filters
If tc filters are attached to a class, they are consulted first
for relevant instructions. Filters can match on all fields of a packet header,
as well as on the firewall mark applied by ipchains or iptables.
.TP
Type of Service
Some qdiscs have built in rules for classifying packets based on the TOS field.
.TP
skb->priority
Userspace programs can encode a class-id in the 'skb->priority' field using
the SO_PRIORITY option.
.P
Each node within the tree can have its own filters but higher level filters
may also point directly to lower classes.

If classification did not succeed, packets are enqueued to the leaf qdisc
attached to that class. Check qdisc specific manpages for details, however.

.SH NAMING
All qdiscs, classes and filters have IDs, which can either be specified
or be automatically assigned.

IDs consist of a major number and a minor number, separated by a colon.
Both major and minor number are limited to 16 bits. There are two special
values: root is signified by major and minor of all ones, and unspecified
is all zeros.

.TP
QDISCS
A qdisc, which potentially can have children,
gets assigned a major number, called a 'handle', leaving the minor
number namespace available for classes. The handle is expressed as '10:'.
It is customary to explicitly assign a handle to qdiscs expected to have
children.

.TP
CLASSES
Classes residing under a qdisc share their qdisc major number, but each have
a separate minor number called a 'classid' that has no relation to their
parent classes, only to their parent qdisc. The same naming custom as for
qdiscs applies.

.TP
FILTERS
Filters have a three part ID, which is only needed when using a hashed
filter hierarchy.

.SH PARAMETERS
The following parameters are widely used in TC. For other parameters,
see the man pages for individual qdiscs.

.TP
RATES
Bandwidths or rates.
These parameters accept a floating point number, possibly followed by
a unit (both SI and IEC units supported).
.RS
.TP
bit or a bare number
Bits per second
.TP
kbit
Kilobits per second
.TP
mbit
Megabits per second
.TP
gbit
Gigabits per second
.TP
tbit
Terabits per second
.TP
bps
Bytes per second
.TP
kbps
Kilobytes per second
.TP
mbps
Megabytes per second
.TP
gbps
Gigabytes per second
.TP
tbps
Terabytes per second

.P
To specify in IEC units, replace the SI prefix (k-, m-, g-, t-) with
IEC prefix (ki-, mi-, gi- and ti-) respectively.

.P
TC store rates as a 32-bit unsigned integer in bps internally,
so we can specify a max rate of 4294967295 bps.
.RE

.TP
TIMES
Length of time. Can be specified as a floating point number
followed by an optional unit:
.RS
.TP
s, sec or secs
Whole seconds
.TP
ms, msec or msecs
Milliseconds
.TP
us, usec, usecs or a bare number
Microseconds.

.P
TC defined its own time unit (equal to microsecond) and stores
time values as 32-bit unsigned integer, thus we can specify a max time value
of 4294967295 usecs.
.RE

.TP
SIZES
Amounts of data. Can be specified as a floating point number
followed by an optional unit:
.RS
.TP
b or a bare number
Bytes.
.TP
kbit
Kilobits
.TP
kb or k
Kilobytes
.TP
mbit
Megabits
.TP
mb or m
Megabytes
.TP
gbit
Gigabits
.TP
gb or g
Gigabytes

.P
TC stores sizes internally as 32-bit unsigned integer in byte,
so we can specify a max size of 4294967295 bytes.
.RE

.TP
VALUES
Other values without a unit.
These parameters are interpreted as decimal by default, but you can
indicate TC to interpret them as octal and hexadecimal by adding a '0'
or '0x' prefix respectively.

.SH TC COMMANDS
The following commands are available for qdiscs, classes and filter:
.TP
add
Add a qdisc, class or filter to a node. For all entities, a
.B parent
must be passed, either by passing its ID or by attaching directly to the root of a device.
When creating a qdisc or a filter, it can be named with the
.B handle
parameter. A class is named with the
.B classid
parameter.

.TP
delete
A qdisc can be deleted by specifying its handle, which may also be 'root'. All subclasses and their leaf qdiscs
are automatically deleted, as well as any filters attached to them.

.TP
change
Some entities can be modified 'in place'. Shares the syntax of 'add', with the exception
that the handle cannot be changed and neither can the parent. In other words,
.B
change
cannot move a node.

.TP
replace
Performs a nearly atomic remove/add on an existing node id. If the node does not exist yet
it is created.

.TP
link
Only available for qdiscs and performs a replace where the node
must exist already.

.SH FORMAT
The show command has additional formatting options:

.TP
.BR "\-s" , " \-stats", " \-statistics"
output more statistics about packet usage.

.TP
.BR "\-d", " \-details"
output more detailed information about rates and cell sizes.

.TP
.BR "\-r", " \-raw"
output raw hex values for handles.

.TP
.BR "\-p", " \-pretty"
decode filter offset and mask values to equivalent filter commands based on TCP/IP.

.TP
.BR "\-iec"
print rates in IEC units (ie. 1K = 1024).

.TP
.BR "\-b", " \-b filename", " \-batch", " \-batch filename"
read commands from provided file or standard input and invoke them.
First failure will cause termination of tc.

.TP
.BR "\-force"
don't terminate tc on errors in batch mode.
If there were any errors during execution of the commands, the application return code will be non zero.

.SH HISTORY
.B tc
was written by Alexey N. Kuznetsov and added in Linux 2.2.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR tc-bfifo (8),
.BR tc-cbq (8),
.BR tc-choke (8),
.BR tc-codel (8),
.BR tc-drr (8),
.BR tc-ematch (8),
.BR tc-fq_codel (8),
.BR tc-hfsc (7),
.BR tc-hfsc (8),
.BR tc-htb (8),
.BR tc-pfifo (8),
.BR tc-pfifo_fast (8),
.BR tc-red (8),
.BR tc-sfb (8),
.BR tc-sfq (8),
.BR tc-stab (8),
.BR tc-tbf (8),
.br
.RB "User documentation at " http://lartc.org/ ", but please direct bugreports and patches to: " <netdev@vger.kernel.org>

.SH AUTHOR
Manpage maintained by bert hubert (ahu@ds9a.nl)