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Discards on Router Interface

I am new to Solarwind’s Orion NPM and I need help interpreting what I am observing. I am two weeks into the 30 day free trial. I have seven sites connected by an MPLS Meshed Network. I have both SNMP and Netflow monitoring enabled on the routers at each site. These are Cisco 2800 series routers. I am using Solarwind’s default settings for all alarms and alerts. From time to time I observe high bandwidth utilization alerts from some of my router interfaces during business hours. These same interfaces also report a high number of discards, up to 40K a day. I am not observing any errors on these interfaces. Are these discards the result of network congestion?

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MarieB

willzd--

Are you working with a SW Sales Rep? If so, the best thing to do would be to contact them. You can also contact them at:
Americas Sales
Phone: 866.530.8100
Fax: 512.857.0125
Email: sales@solarwinds.

Donald_Francis

More than likely they are because of congestion. This will mean that your router queued as much as it could and had to begin tail dropping the traffic.

willzd

Donald - Thank you for your kind help. I suspected that was what was happening, I just needed someone with more experience than me to confirm. I have been researching my alternatives. Do you have any opinions on WAN optimization vs. just increasing bandwidth?

Donald_Francis

I think that is really subject to what kind of data you have flowing and the cost of both options. Every packet can be optimized a little but some things lend themselves to the kind of gains that you read about.

Neither option is free. They both cost something. Which is another factor, how much is it to at least double your bandiwdth vs buying hardware or software for WAN opitmization. And of course they both have a recurring cost, the WAN optimization would in the way of maintenance and your time to maintain it and the bandwidth would be in your monthly bill.

Now with all that said my own personal experience has been that we have tinkered with optimization from time to time but we have always stuck with bandwidth.