10 Gigabit Ethernet shows as speed 4294967295

[evilzardoz]

Hi,

We've upgraded some of our core network to 10GE ports (Cisco 4 port 10GE blade, 6500 switches, 12.2(18)SXF) and cacti now thinks that the max port speed is 4294967295 bits per second.

Is this hitting some limit - and if so, can we overcome it?

Thanks

[gandalf]

No own experience on this. But latest cacti 0.8.6i includes some patch for wrong ifSpeed, please see bugs list of the announcement
Reinhard

[rony]

Are you using 32-bit (SNMPv1) or 64-bit (SNMPv2) counters on those interfaces?

[evilzardoz]

SNMPv2 with 64-bit counters is what we're using.

Has anybody else here been able to monitor 10GE interfaces?

[TheWitness]

Can you walk the ifInterfaces using a command line tool and post your output?

snmpwalk -c <your_community> -v 2c <your_hostname> .1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1

TheWitness

[egarnel]

Sorry to jump into this thread, but we are seeing the same thing

from the walk:
IF-MIB::ifSpeed.293 = Gauge32: 4294967295
IF-MIB::ifSpeed.294 = Gauge32: 4294967295
IF-MIB::ifDescr.294 = STRING: TenGigabitEthernet6/1
IF-MIB::ifDescr.295 = STRING: TenGigabitEthernet6/2
IF-MIB::ifDescr.296 = STRING: TenGigabitEthernet6/3
IF-MIB::ifDescr.297 = STRING: TenGigabitEthernet6/4


snmpwalk -c mysnmpstring_notreally -v 2c shownet1 system
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software
IOS (tm) s72033_rp Software (s72033_rp-PSV-M), Version 12.2(18)SXD6, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)

[TheWitness]

So, the issue is your agent not Cacti. It can not return more than 4GBytes. I think that this is less than 2**64 but maybe the Cisco(??) compiler does not support larger than 2**? bit integers.

TheWitness

[rony]

Now that offically falls in the Monday Funk category...

[egarnel]

I opened a TAC with Cisco to find out why it caps at 4 Gb. They will probably tell me to upgrade

[rony]

I opened a TAC with Cisco to find out why it caps at 4 Gb. They will probably tell me to upgrade

I can confirm that they will most likely tell you to upgrade..

[egarnel]

Here is what I got from TAC

ifSpeed was defined in the RFC when the highest speed of an interface was 16 Mbps and so, the SYNTAX for this is a 32 bit integer, whose maximum value can be 2 ^32 which is 4294967295.

To find out the ifSpeed equivalent for TenGig interfaces, here is what you can do:
.1.3.6.1.2.1.31.1.1.1.15
ifHighSpeed OBJECT-TYPE
-- FROM IF-MIB
SYNTAX Gauge
MAX-ACCESS read-only
STATUS Current
DESCRIPTION "An estimate of the interface's current bandwidth in
units of 1,000,000 bits per second. If this object
reports a value of `n' then the speed of the interface
is somewhere in the range of `n-500,000' to
`n+499,999'.

For interfaces which do not vary in
bandwidth or for those where no accurate estimation
can be made, this object should contain the nominal
bandwidth. For a sub-layer which has no concept of
bandwidth, this object should be zero."

the walk kicks back the following (truncated)

10 gig int IF-MIB::ifHighSpeed.294 = Gauge32: 10000

1 gig int IF-MIB::ifHighSpeed.81 = Gauge32: 1000

if eth int IF-MIB::ifHighSpeed.97 = Gauge32: 100

[TheWitness]

Can you please open a feature request in Mantis. This could be quite interesting. Also, please attach the documentation that you have attached here.

TheWitness

[egarnel]

10-4. I will do it in the am

[evilzardoz]

Looks like I really opened a can of worms on this one!

What do I do to cacti to use the ifHighSpeed value? (or is that not possible without said feature addition?)

Thanks

[TheWitness]

Well, the first part is pretty strait forward, the XML file needs to be updated to gather it in. The second part is more complicated. We, either set the max value in the rrdfile automatically, or we manually hammer it in. Therefore, that algorythm needs to be updated to fix things up with interfaces that have a very high speed.

It's definately a patch.

In the mean time, if you think you will drive your interfaces above 4.2Gbit's, you can simply tune those RRDfiles to increase the Maximum value a bit.

TheWitness