What is a characteristic of traffic shaping?

Traffic shaping increases transmission intervals for excess traffic by introducing buffering delays; it does not minimize intervals, which would be a characteristic of expedited forwarding or priority queuing.

Remarking DSCP or IP precedence bits on excess packets is the function of traffic policing with a remark action, not traffic shaping, which does not alter packet markings.

Traffic shaping works by holding excess packets in a queue and releasing them at the shaped rate, which inherently delays traffic above the committed rate; when the queue is full and no additional buffer space is available, the shaper will drop packets, making both delay and conditional dropping defining characteristics of shaping.

Classifying traffic based on headers, applications, or other characteristics is the function of a traffic classifier or class-map, which is a prerequisite step that feeds into shaping but is not a characteristic of shaping itself.