In this paper, a new traffic shaping mechanism for ATM networks, the RC Shaper, is proposed and studied. The objective of a shaping mechanism is, to smoothen the traffic by reducing the burstiness. Using the analogies between the RC low pass filter and the proposed shaper, performance measures such as burstiness reduction factor and cell mean waiting time of the shaper can be obtained. In this current exploratory stage of study, the shaper is used to shape the well-known Markov Modulated Poisson Process. Behaviour of the shaper is established through examining the burstiness reduction achieved by the device. Another performance measure obtained for the shaper is the cell mean waiting time. Difference in shaping each connection individually and a group of connections collectively is also observed. From our results, it seems better to shape VCs within a virtual path `aggregately' instead of shaping each of these VCs individually. Comparison with fixed-rate shaper is reported and difference in multiplexing shaped and unshaped cell streams is also observed.