---
name: "tc-choke"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "iproute2"
version: "7.3.0-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/tc-choke"
---

# tc-choke(8)

choose and keep scheduler

## NAME

choke - choose and keep scheduler

## SYNOPSIS

**tc qdisc ... choke** **limit** packets **min** packets **max** packets **avpkt** bytes **burst** packets **\[ ecn \] \[ bandwidth** rate **\] probability** chance

## DESCRIPTION

CHOKe (CHOose and Keep for responsive flows, CHOose and Kill for unresponsive flows) is a classless qdisc designed to both identify and penalize flows that monopolize the queue. CHOKe is a variation of RED, and the configuration is similar to RED.

## ALGORITHM

Once the queue hits a certain average length, a random packet is drawn from the queue. If both the to-be-queued and the drawn packet belong to the same flow, both packets are dropped. Otherwise, if the queue length is still below the maximum length, the new packet has a configurable chance of being marked (which may mean dropped). If the queue length exceeds **max**, the new packet will always be marked (or dropped). If the queue length exceeds **limit**, the new packet is always dropped.

The marking probability computation is the same as used by the RED qdisc.

## PARAMETERS

The parameters are the same as for RED, except that RED uses bytes whereas choke counts packets. See [**tc-red**(8)](/tc-red/8.md) for a description.

## SOURCE

- o

  R. Pan, B. Prabhakar, and K. Psounis, "CHOKe, A Stateless Active Queue Management Scheme for Approximating Fair Bandwidth Allocation", IEEE INFOCOM, 2000.

- o

  A. Tang, J. Wang, S. Low, "Understanding CHOKe: Throughput and Spatial Characteristics", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2004

## SEE ALSO

[**tc**(8)](/tc/8.md), [**tc-red**(8)](/tc-red/8.md)

## AUTHOR

sched\_choke was contributed by Stephen Hemminger.