How to find backplane usage on a Catalyst switch?

Is there an SNMP mib or IOS command to tell me how much average bandwidth is utilized across a whole Catalyst switch's backplane?

I need to make a purchase decision on a PCI-X NIC for doing packet capture and it depends a lot on how much bandwidth I would need to capture. The switches are a 6509 and 4506, both native IOS. We aren't even close to using all the backplane bandwidth on those things, but I do need a real number.

Thanks, Bob

Reply to
Bob
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Bob,

Check out this link

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Reply to
CJKoch

That reference is OK for the 5000/5500. Check it out carefully for the

6500. I suspect that what you will get is that sysTraffic OBJECT-TYPE will return the 32/16Gbps bus value and not the value pertaining to the "Fabric" of for example the SE720. Remember that a single 6500 can have both Bus and fabric and that therefore a single mib cannot do both.

The document itself is not too clear to me, the headline says it refers to the 6000/6500 and then inside there are two key paragraphs but the headline on those say that they apply to one of 5000/5500. No mention of 6500!

Good luck, you may need it.

You could always get the values for all of the ports and add them up. If you go that route watch the CPU that the snmp requests use up.

Remember what goes in and what comes out are not necessarily the same. Broadcasts/multicasts/(unicasts) may get multiplied Unicasts may get black holed.

Open TAC case.

Reply to
anybody43

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