The invention discloses a multi-stage hierarchical bandwidth management method, which comprises the following steps of: A10, configuring CIR (Committed Information Rate) and PIR (peak Information Rate) (or EIR (Excess Information Rate)) of each stage of scheduling node according to a business model, wherein the CIR of the node is set according to the bandwidth purchased by a user in the first stage, the bandwidth distribution principle of each node from the second stage of scheduling is shown in the description, EIRni=PIRni-CIRni, and n is not less than 2; and A20, respectively marking messages as green, yellow or red by using MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework), RFC2697 (Request for Comments 2697) or RFC2698 algorithms in the first stage, configuring each node into a color sensitive mode and a coupling mode from the second stage, and shaping the traffic according to the MEF algorithm. By using the invention, the multi-stage hierarchical bandwidth management is realized on an exchanging chip supporting the MEF Traffic Shaping algorithm without need of special ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) or hardware; and the requirements are satisfied through updating software under the situation of changing or updating the business so that considerable hardware cost is saved; and the bandwidth distribution algorithm of the hierarchical business model is simple and convenient for web masters to configure.