A network engineer is investigating reports of poor performance on a videoconferencing application.

Traffic shaping is a congestion management method that regulates network data transfer by delaying the flow of less important or less desired packets1. Traffic shaping can help to improve the performance of a videoconferencing application by prioritizing its packets over other types of traffic and smoothing out traffic bursts. Traffic shaping can also help to avoid packet loss and ensure fair allocation of bandwidth among different applications or users.

Flow control is a mechanism that prevents a sender from overwhelming a receiver with more data than it can handle. Flow control can help to avoid buffer overflow and data loss, but it does not prioritize different types of traffic or smooth out traffic bursts. Flow control operates at the data link layer or the transport layer, while traffic shaping operates at the network layer or above.

NetFlow is a protocol that collects and analyzes network traffic data for monitoring and troubleshooting purposes2. NetFlow can help to identify the sources, destinations, volumes, and types of traffic on a network, but it does not regulate or shape the traffic flow. NetFlow operates at the network layer or above.

Link aggregation is a technique that combines multiple physical links into one logical link for increased bandwidth, redundancy, and load balancing. Link aggregation can help to improve the performance of a videoconferencing application by providing more available bandwidth at the WAN connection, but it does not prioritize different types of traffic or smooth out traffic bursts. Link aggregation operates at the data link layer.