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In order to analyze or control one type of traffic distinctly, PacketShaper must be able to differentiate it from other types of traffic. The traffic tree's traffic classes are PacketShaper's mechanism for identifying and organizing different types of traffic.

PacketShaper differentiates one application from another by evaluating characteristics in traffic flows and organizing them into classes. Each traffic class contains atleast one matching rule, a set of characteristics that identifies a specific traffic type.

Once a traffic class is created, it is a good practice to observe the traffic to and from each traffic class, so that you can check the effectiveness of the rules that you have set per traffic class. This is where the PKTSSClassStTest test helps. This test auto-discovers the traffic classes configured in the PacketShaper S-Series Load Balancer, monitors the volume of traffic sent and received by each traffic class, captures packet drops, hits to each class and the policy associated with the class, and enables administrators to determine the following:

Outputs of the test : One set of the results for each traffic class configured on the target PacketShaper Load Balancer S-Series device that is being monitored.

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
classHits	Indicates the number of times traffic flows matched this traffic class.	Number	Class hits occur only at the beginning of a traffic flow or session. The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the name of the partition, link direction, class rate and current class rate.
policyHits	Indicates the number of times policy applied to this traffic class was hit.	Number	A policy determines how an application's individual flows are treated in the context of competing applications, and allows you to manage bandwidth management on a flow-by-flow basis.With policies, you can give each flow of mission-critical traffic the bandwidth it needs for optimum performance, as well as protect it from greedy, less important traffic. In addition, policies can keep non-urgent traffic flows (such as FTP) from consuming more than an appropriate share of bandwidth.
dataCount	Indicates the amount of data transmitted using this traffic class during the last measurement period.	MB
reXDataCount	Indicates the amount of data was retransmitted using this traffic class during the last measurement period.	MB	If large amount of data takes too long to be successfully retransmitted, you may have to figure out what is causing repeated retransmission failures and fix it before packet loss occurs.
packetCount	Indicates the number of packets that were transmitted using this traffic class during the last measurement period.	Number
dataPacketCount	Indicates the number of data packets that were transmitted over TCP using this traffic class during the last measurement period.	Number
reXDataPktCount	Indicates the number of data packets that were retransmitted over TCP using this traffic class during the last measurement period.	Number	If TCP packets take too long to be successfully retransmitted, you may have to figure out the real reason behind repeated retransmission failures and fix it before packet loss occurs. Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero.
clientFloodBlock	Indicates the number of SYN flood attacks blocked on a client for this traffic class during the last measurement period	Number	A SYN attack involves a system sending hundreds of requests to a server over the Internet. Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero.
serverFloodBlock	Indicates the number of SYN flood attacks blocked on a server for this traffic class during the last measurement period.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero.