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Forum Discussion
Switch and Switch port statistics & Broadcast ...what does it mean....
1) When looking at the Switch statistics for Port 10 for example, what does it mean when the Port is "Receiving" vs "Transmitting" is transmitting = download and receiving=uploading?
2) Also How many Broadcast packets are too many on a switch ? anyway to find the Switch Queue Length and if the switch is "Dropping" packets?
2 Replies
Hi joelp1212 ,
In the IT GUI (main UI) Monitoring\Ports\Port Statistics and Monitoring\Ports\Port Detailed Statistics show the traffic for IN/RX (inbound, receive, traffic entering into the switch port from the connected device) and then for OUT /TX (outbound, transmit, traffic sent by the switch port to the connected device).
In the IT GUI, the "drop packets" are only visible per port in Monitoring\Ports\Port Detailed Statistics, you are looking after "Receive Packets Discarded" for the traffic entering into the port from the connected device, and "Transmit Packets Discarded" for the traffic sent from the switch to the connected device.
In the AV UI Diagnostics\Ports Statistics, you can see the drop packets directly in the same table with all ports (IN/RX) and then all ports (OUT/RX). Same in the Engage controller.
In the CLI, #show interface counters also shows the drop packets for IN/RX and then for OUT/TX for all ports in one table each time.
That was for your Question #1.
For your Question #2, you need to look at the Dropped packets - but you won't know if these dropped packets are for Broadcast or Unicast or Multicast just like that. There's always broadcast in a network (ARP etc.) but to make sure there's not too many, we activate the Broadcast Storm Protection in all our Managed Switches (M4250, M4300, M4350), please look in the IT GUI (Main UI) at Security\Traffic Control\Storm Control\Storm Control Interface Configuration. There, for one port, when you specify Enable for Broadcast Storm Recovery and the broadcast traffic on the specified Ethernet port exceeds the configured 5% threshold, the switch blocks (discards) the broadcast traffic. This way, we don't suffer from more than 5% broadcast traffic (percentage of the max bandwidth on the port) in both directions. Everything above 5% (or the percentage you are configuring there) will be dropped.
There's no way of looking at the queue length but I hope it helps you.
Regards,
Thank you again - just a follow-up When we activate Broadcast storm control, how do we know if the packet was dropped after 5% (excessive broadcast) ? where would we look ? And how do we know when the "5%" threshold is reached or being reached or has gone below 5% i.e. 4%?
secondly - Example here - If PC1 is connected to Port 10, and it receives a broadcast such as arp etc and it is NOT the destined MAC address - will the PORT statistic for Port 10 show discarded i.e. I would assume it should because the NIC MAC say is aaaa:aaaa: and the arp is looking for bbbb:bbbb:bbbb ?
share an example if possible to know when we will see discards....
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