Valve is a
Unix pipeline component and stand-alone copy utility
which permits limiting the transfer rate (bytes per second) to a
specified value. This allows bulk data transfers to be performed
without monopolising disc and/or network bandwidth to the detriment
of other users and applications, for example when backing up a large
filesystem across the Internet to a server located at a remote site.
You can think of valve as a nice command for I/O.
Valve is written in portable ANSI C using the
Literate
Programming methodology.