[c-nsp] Cisco 7201 (G2) Traffic Performance (High CPU Utilization)

[Nick Hilliard]

On 15/10/2014 03:37, Troy Boutso wrote:
> traffic shaping, MPLS, VPNs etc. My company has decided to purchase this
> platform due to the appealing pricing etc.

hopefully it was very appealing indeed.  Getting new support contracts on
these boxes is no longer possible, and they will be formally EOL in 2016.

> The issue: The routers are doing about 120Mbps/60Mbps on the WAN link and
> the reciprocal of that via the port-channel sub-interface towards the core
> stack.
> 
> I see the CPU utilization is already at 35-38% constantly. Which I believe
> is very high considering the amount of traffic the box is supposedly
> capable of doing.
> The traffic is primarily voice traffic + web traffic.
> Naturally the PPS is higher than usual but well below the 2Million the box
> can do.
> 
> PPS on WAN LINK = 45000 / 40000
> PPS on Port-Channel = 40000 / 45000

pps throughput on this platform is highly sensitive to interface
configuration.  45kpps is nothing to worry about.  If the CPU load is high,
then check to see what's causing it.  Can you post your interface
configuration for both ingress and egress ports?

Nick