Traffic shaping is a bandwidth management technique used on computer networks which delays some or all datagrams to bring them into compliance with a desired traffic profile. Traffic shaping is used to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds. It is often confused with traffic policing, the distinct but related practice of packet dropping and packet marking.

One type of traffic shaping is application-based traffic shaping. In application-based traffic shaping, fingerprinting tools are first used to identify applications of interest, which are then subject to shaping policies. Some controversial cases of application-based traffic shaping include bandwidth throttling of peer-to-peer file sharing traffic. Many application protocols use encryption to circumvent application-based traffic shaping.

Another type of traffic shaping is route-based traffic shaping. Route-based traffic shaping is conducted based on previous-hop or next-hop information.

If a link becomes utilized to the point where there is a significant level of congestion, latency can rise substantially. Traffic shaping can be used to prevent this from occurring and keep latency in check. Traffic shaping provides a means to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network in a specified period (bandwidth throttling), or the maximum rate at which the traffic is sent (rate limiting), or more complex criteria such as generic cell rate algorithm. This control can be accomplished in many ways and for many reasons; however, traffic shaping is always achieved by delaying packets.

Traffic shaping is commonly applied at the network edges to control traffic entering the network, but can also be applied by the traffic source (for example, computer or network card) or by an element in the network.

Traffic shaping is sometimes applied by traffic sources to ensure the traffic they send complies with a contract, which may be enforced in the network by traffic policing.

Shaping is widely used for teletraffic engineering, and appears in domestic ISPs' networks as one of several Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMPs). Some Internet service providers (ISPs) may use traffic shaping to limit resources consumed by peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, such as BitTorrent.

Data centers use traffic shaping to maintain service level agreements for the variety of applications and the many tenants hosted as they all share the same physical network.