A company plans to deploy a new application across the campus network and asks an...

Policing is the correct mechanism for managing traffic that exceeds the configured threshold. The application is UDP-based, inelastic, and sensitive to delay and jitter, so excess traffic should not be buffered and transmitted later. Cisco defines traffic policing as measuring traffic against a configured rate and applying an action such as transmit, drop, or remark when traffic conforms, exceeds, or violates the policy. In contrast, shaping buffers excess traffic and releases it later to smooth the output rate. That behavior is useful for TCP or provider handoff control, but it can add delay and jitter, which is harmful for inelastic real-time UDP flows. Scheduling has already been addressed by allocating bandwidth and assigning queues; it decides how queues are serviced, not how excess flows are constrained. Remarking changes packet markings but does not by itself enforce a traffic threshold. Therefore, policing is the appropriate QoS conditioning action for traffic above the configured limit. Reference topics: traffic policing, QoS conditioning, shaping versus policing, UDP real-time applications, delay and jitter control.