When a port scheduler is present on an egress port or channel, the system ensures that all policers, queues, and schedulers receive bandwidth from that scheduler to prevent free-running policers or queues that can cause the aggregate operational PIR of the port or channel to oversubscribe the bandwidth available. When the aggregate maximum rate for the policers and queues on a port or channel operates above the available line rate, the forwarding ratio between the policers and queues is affected by the hardware schedulers on the port and may not reflect the scheduling defined on the port or intermediate schedulers. Policers, queues, and schedulers that are either explicitly attached to the port scheduler using the port-parent command or are attached to an intermediate scheduler hierarchy that is ultimately attached to the port scheduler are managed through the normal eight priority levels. Queues, policers, and schedulers that are not attached directly to the port scheduler and are not attached to an intermediate scheduler that itself is attached to the port scheduler are considered orphaned and, by default, are tied to priority 1 with a weight of 0. All weight 0 policers, queues, and schedulers at priority level 1 are allocated bandwidth after all other children and each weight 0 child is given an equal share of the remaining bandwidth. This default orphan behavior may be overridden at the port scheduler policy by using the orphan-override command. The orphan-override command accepts the same parameters as the port-parent command. When the orphan-override command is executed, the parameters are used as the port parent parameters for all orphans associated with a port using the port scheduler policy.