The Hierarchical QoS (H-QoS) mechanism is designed to enforce a user definable hierarchical shaping behavior on an arbitrary set of policers and queues. The mechanism accomplishes this by monitoring the offered rate of each policer and queue and using the result as an input to a virtual scheduler hierarchy defined by the user. The hierarchy consists of a number of virtual schedulers with configurable maximum rates per scheduler and attachment parameters between each. The parameters consist of weights and priority levels used to distribute the available bandwidth in a top-down fashion through the hierarchy with the queues at the bottom. The resulting bandwidth provided to each member policer and queue by the virtual schedulers is then configured as an operational PIR on the corresponding hardware policer or queue, which prevents that policer or queue from receiving more hardware scheduler bandwidth than dictated by the virtual scheduler.