[c-nsp] Dynamic output buffer allocation on Cisco 4948

Blake Dunlap ikiris at gmail.com
Thu Sep 26 11:04:12 EDT 2013


This may seem like a stupid question, but when you were pinging, were you
pinging from hosts, or from the routers?

-Blake


On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 9:38 AM, John Neiberger <jneiberger at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks! I talked to our Cisco NCE about this and he gave me these commands:
>
> show qos  interface gigabitEthernet x/y- will show you 4 queues and also
> whether QoS is disabled or not
>
> sh int gi x/y counters detail -you will see packet counters in queue #1-4
> incrementing
>
> Sh platform hardware interface g x/y stat | in TxB
>
>
> I'm nearly certain that this big buffer issue is the answer to my high
> variable latency problem, but there is still one mystery about this that
> has me completely perplexed. The high variable latency was only occurring
> in one direction (from VLAN A to VLAN B) but not in the other (from VLAN B
> to VLAN A). What really makes that weird is that because of some hsrp
> differences, we really had a circular topology for a bit. The path was
> *exactly* the same no matter which direction you were pinging. The ICMP
> packets had to travel around the same circle through the same devices and
> interfaces. So if we have big buffers on congested interfaces that are
> introducing variable latency, why would we only see it in one direction?
>
>
> When VLAN A pings VLAN B, it is the initial ICMP packet that would have
> been delayed, while the response would come in on a different interface
> that wasn't congested. When VLAN B pings VLAN A, the initial ping would not
> hit congested interfaces but the ping reply would. The total round trip
> time should have been similar, but it never was. I'm completely stumped by
> that. I even had Cisco HTTS on this for a couple of days and they couldn't
> figure it out.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 1:50 AM, Terebizh, Evgeny <eterebizh at amt.ru>
> wrote:
>
> > Try also
> > "show platform hardware interface gigabitEthernet 1/1 tx-queue".
> > I guess it's gonna show the actual values for queue utilisation.
> > Please let me know if this helps.
> >
> > /ET
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 9/24/13 11:17 PM, "John Neiberger" <jneiberger at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >I've been helping to troubleshoot an interesting problem with variable
> > >latency through a 4948. I haven't run into this before. I usually have
> > >seen
> > >really low latency through 4948s, but this particular application
> requires
> > >consistent low latency and they've been noticing that latency goes up on
> > >average as load goes up. It didn't seem to be a problem on their
> servers,
> > >but communication through busy interfaces seemed to dramatically
> increase
> > >the latency. They were used to <1ms latency and it was bouncing up to
> 20+
> > >ms at times. I'm starting to think this is due to the shared output
> buffer
> > >in the 4948 causing the output buffer on the uplink to dynamically get
> > >bigger.
> > >
> > >I've been trying to find more details on how the 4948 handles its shared
> > >output queue space, but I haven't been able to find anything. Do any of
> > >you
> > >know more about how this works and what commands I could use to
> > >troubleshoot? I can't find anything that might show how much buffer
> space
> > >a
> > >particular interface is using at any given time, or if it even makes
> sense
> > >to think of it that way. If I knew the size of the buffer at any given
> > >moment, I could calculate the expected latency and prove whether or not
> > >that was the problem.
> > >
> > >Thanks!
> > >John
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> > >https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
> > >archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
> >
> >
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