This is a very basic question to which I cannot find a clear answer. If I have, say, a 100Mbps connection and I create a 5Mbps cbq (or htb or whatever) class on it. Something like

tc class add dev eth0 parent 1: classid 1:1 cbq rate 5mbit bandwidth 100mbit allot 1514 avpkt 1000 bounded

and I direct two different user's IP addresses to that queue using tc filter and iptables, does that mean that EACH of the users has a simultaneous maximum rate of 5Mbps, or does it rather mean that the two users SHARE a total bandwidth rate of 5Mbps, so that if they are doing simultaneous downloads they will at best get 3Mbps for one user and 2Mbps for the other or some similar split?

So, shared 5Mbps total, or max 5Mbps each? Which is it?

Many thanks.

anything placed in the queue you create with a 5mbit rate & ceil will be forced to share 5mbit with everything else in that queue. I'm not sure of the exact "split" but the queue should be capped at ~5mbit. It is no different than if you [physically] had a 5mbit line from an ISP in that no matter how many users you have on your LAN you are still limited to 5mbit by ISP. That is all that you are doing, being the ISP and providing only a slice of the overall available to certain users (IPs).

To sum up: shared 5mbit between the two users in your example.

Thanks so much. That's exactly what I needed to know. Much obliged.