Should traffic control root qdisc & child class limit traffic?

I noticed that before I add client leaf classes that the value I set
as the ceiling has no effect. For example, after putting in the
following commands:

tc qdisc add dev sat0 root handle 9997 htb default 9999 r2q 2
tc class add dev sat0 parent 9997: classid 9997:9998 htb rate
500000bit ceil 500000bit

I can send over 3000000bits/sec with none of it being dropped. It
looks like the 500000bit ceiling I defined is ignored. After I add
client leaf classes below the root, I then see that packets are
dropped when I try to exceed the ceiling.

Is this behavior expected?

Washington Ratso wrote:
> I noticed that before I add client leaf classes that the value I set
> as the ceiling has no effect. For example, after putting in the
> following commands:
>
> tc qdisc add dev sat0 root handle 9997 htb default 9999 r2q 2
> tc class add dev sat0 parent 9997: classid 9997:9998 htb rate
> 500000bit ceil 500000bit

I guess this won't do anything alone because there is nothing to filter
traffic to it. It should work if default was 9998 rather than 9999 - but
beware when using default generally as it catches non ip traffic.