Bandwith Guages Question

MikeWax13

Hello everyone.  I'm a brand new toolset user so I'm basicially learning as I go. 

 

 

My question involves the real time bandwidth gauges....  I am currently monitoring a port on our core dedicated to one of our main Novell servers.  I am also monitoring the NIC on the server itself.  I'm having a hard time understanding why there are different utilization numbers on each gauge.  At times they are very close, but there are times when the port on the core is showing way more traffic than the NIC on the server or vice versa.  Any thoughts?

 

 

Thanks so much!!

floyd.may

There are a few thing that could be causing this:

• Polling interval
  The bandwidth gauges operate by polling each device every 15 seconds.  If a spike shows on one device but not the other, it's very likely that the same spike will appear - up to 15 seconds later - than the other.
• SNMP Agent Refresh
  The SNMP agent on your core router and your Novell server is refreshed by the OS periodically.  The data that is available via SNMP isn't updated every time a single packet goes across the interface.  It's possible that a given spike could be due to the SNMP agent having just refreshed right before Bandwidth Gauges polls the device.  In this case, because we're polling every 15 seconds and normalizing to bits per second, the resulting changes from one poll to the next can be larger than you might expect.
  

At any rate, I'd recommend using the Workspace Studio (newly available in v10) to create an Interface Chart (or two) that shows percent utilization for these interfaces.  Sometimes the picture is clearer when you get to see the changes over time.  The gauges are a "right now" snapshot, which can be, at times, misleading.

HTH!