A method for traffic shaping includes receiving traffic from one or more clients at one or more ingress ports of forwarding engine of a network node. The method also includes transmitting at least a portion of the traffic through the forwarding engine to one or more first egress ports of the forwarding engine and shaping the traffic transmitted to the egress ports. Furthermore, the method includes looping the shaped traffic internally within the network node back to one or more ingress ports of the forwarding engine. The method further includes transmitting the looped traffic through the forwarding engine to one or more second egress ports (the second egress ports different than the first egress ports) and outputting the shaped traffic from the network node.