и оно не принималось при $RATE > 999kbit. Посмотрел man и нашёл вот что:
TBF is a pure shaper and never schedules traffic. It is non-work-conserving and may throttle itself, although packets are available, to ensure that the configured rate is not exceeded. On all platforms except for Alpha, it is able to shape up to 1mbit/s of normal traffic with ideal minimal burstiness, sending out data exactly at the configured rates.
Вот откуда такая информация :). А дело было в peakrate 1mbit. Вот так то.