How to show more accurate max values? Change sample period?

[fiskis]

I am monitoring traffic on a port and when I use the manager program to see live data, I notice it spikes up to 5mbits. But when I look at my cacti graphs, it show something around 3 mbits. I am guessing this is because of the 5 minute sample period. How can I get more accurate about how big the spikes are? Change the cron to run every 30 seconds?

It's important to show customers that thy need a 5mbits pipe. They see the cacti graphs and say "oh, my max is only 3mbits"

Any help is appriciated.

Brian

[gandalf]

You're quite right. Averaging matters. Its a question of how short the time interval is. Even when measuring at 1s intervals, you will find that within that interval, there are spikes. Its quite normal. Question is, how narrow that interval should be. Find a 1min polling "patch" in the Announcement forum. AFAIK, this is the shortest interval cacti supports at time of writing.
Reinhard