A queue is where packets that are forwarded are buffered before scheduling. Packets are not actually forwarded through the schedulers; they are forwarded from the queues directly to ingress or egress interfaces. The association between the queue and the virtual schedulers is intended to accomplish bandwidth allocation to the queue. Because the offered load is derived from queue utilization, bandwidth allocation is dependent on the queue distribution among the scheduler hierarchy. Queues can be tied to only one scheduler within the hierarchy.