What does the term POLICED in Linux network scheduler (tc qdisc) named after?

Question

POLICED means that the speed of ingress packet will be limited and the exceeding packets will be dropped.

I saw a comment "skb is shot by police" in include/linux/netdevice.h.

It's of course alike, but is there any story behind this name?

Answer 1

Yes -

http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v3.2.9/net/sched/Kconfig

menuconfig NET_SCHED
        bool "QoS and/or fair queueing"
        select NET_SCH_FIFO
        ---help---
          When the kernel has several packets to send out over a network
          device, it has to decide which ones to send first, which ones to
          delay, and which ones to drop. This is the job of the queueing
          disciplines, several different algorithms for how to do this
          "fairly" have been proposed.
...
config NET_ACT_POLICE
        tristate "Traffic Policing"
        depends on NET_CLS_ACT 
        ---help---
          Say Y here if you want to do traffic policing, i.e. strict
          bandwidth limiting. This action replaces the existing policing
          module.

          To compile this code as a module, choose M here: the
          module will be called act_police.