The leaky bucket is an algorithm based on an analogy of how a bucket with a constant leak will overflow if either the average rate at which water is poured in exceeds the rate at which the bucket leaks or if more water than the capacity of the bucket is poured in all at once. It can be used to determine whether some sequence of discrete events conforms to defined limits on their average and peak rates or frequencies, e.g. to limit the actions associated with these events to these rates or delay them until they do conform to the rates. It may also be used to check conformance or limit to an average rate alone, i.e. remove any variation from the average.
It is used in packet-switched computer networks and telecommunications networks in both the traffic policing, traffic shaping and scheduling of data transmissions, in the form of packets,[note 1] to defined limits on bandwidth and burstiness (a measure of the variations in the traffic flow).
A version of the leaky bucket, the generic cell rate algorithm, is recommended for Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks[1] in UPC and NPC at user–network interfaces or inter-network interfaces or network-to-network interfaces to protect a network from excessive traffic levels on connections routed through it. The generic cell rate algorithm, or an equivalent, may also be used to shape transmissions by a network interface card onto an ATM network.
At least some implementations of the leaky bucket are a mirror image of the token bucket algorithm and will, given equivalent parameters, determine exactly the same sequence of events to conform or not conform to the same limits.
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