In Cisco networking, a policy-map is part of the Modular QoS CLI (MQC) framework used to define Quality of Service (QoS) policies. It allows you to specify how traffic should be treated—such as how much bandwidth it should get, whether it should be prioritized, dropped, or marked.

policy-map “XX”-5mbps — Meaning:

While “XX”-5mbps is a placeholder name for a policy-map (and can be named anything by the user), the naming suggests this policy-map is intended to limit or shape traffic to 5 Mbps.

How it’s typically used

• Here’s an example configuration of what a policy-map named XX-5mbps might look like:

policy-map XX-5mbps

class class-default

police 5000000 8000 8000 conform-action transmit exceed-action drop

• Explanation:

policy-map XX-5mbps: This defines a policy named XX-5mbps.

class class-default: This applies the policy to the default class of traffic (i.e., all traffic not matched by any specific class-map).

police 5000000 8000 8000:

5000000 is the committed rate (5 Mbps).

• The next two numbers are the burst sizes in bytes (used to allow occasional traffic bursts).

conform-action transmit: Traffic within the 5 Mbps rate is forwarded.

exceed-action drop: Traffic exceeding the rate is dropped.