The invention concerns a method of managing traffic for a virtual connection of a packet-based communications network, said method consisting in: transmitting packets from source customer-premises equipment to destination customer-premises equipment; time-division multiplexing the packets coming from the various source customer-premises equipment; measuring the data-rate of the multiplexed packets; temporarily storing the multiplexed packets in a queue; transmitting the stored packets over the virtual connection; determining a channel utilization factor related to the rate at which packets are transmitted over the virtual connection towards the destination customer-premises equipment; and transmitting the channel utilization factor to data-rate management means so as to control the send information rate upstream from the multiplexing; the channel utilization factor taking into account the length of the queue and the time taken to transmit the factor to the data-rate management means so as to prevent the queue from overflowing.