Control of preemption-based beat-down effect

In one embodiment, a node receives packets from one or more input interfaces, and may place the packets in an appropriate output queue for a corresponding output interface. The node may also place received unmarked packets from each of the input interfaces in a corresponding virtual queue of a virtual scheduler for the corresponding output interface. The virtual scheduler may be served at a configured rate, and any unmarked packets in the virtual queue that exceed a configured threshold may be marked.