What mechanism is used for mitigating excessive traffic during a DDoS attack?

Traffic shaping is an effective mechanism for mitigating excessive traffic during a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. This technique involves controlling the volume of traffic being sent over a network by prioritizing certain types of traffic and delaying or throttling less critical traffic. By managing bandwidth and reducing the impact of non-essential traffic, traffic shaping helps to maintain service availability and performance during periods of excessive load caused by DDoS attacks.

In the context of a DDoS attack, where the goal is often to overwhelm a network by flooding it with traffic, implementing traffic shaping can allow the system to prioritize legitimate traffic and ensure that services remain accessible to genuine users. This is crucial for maintaining operational continuity and preventing total service disruption.

While load balancing is also a relevant function in managing network traffic, it specifically distributes incoming requests across multiple servers or resources to optimize resource use and prevent any single point of failure. It does not directly mitigate excessive traffic flows caused by a DDoS attack, making it less effective for this particular scenario.

IPsec configuration primarily addresses the needs for secure communication over a network but does not function as a mechanism for managing or mitigating excessive traffic during a DDoS incident.

Packet sniffing refers to monitoring network traffic for analysis or troubleshooting