Management likes to know how much Internet pipe a particular site uses, and I appreciate seeing the growth trend over the last 14 years, too. But the standard NPM polling rate of once each ten minutes reveals just a fraction of the actual consumed bandwidth. This is easily proven by comparing NPM's bandwidth reported to the bandwidth utilization discovered by Engineer's Toolset Bandwidth Gauges set to poll every ten seconds.
Confirmation can be had by remoting into the switch and using the "show interface" command to see how much traffic is flowing through it. The Bandwidth Gauge shows a truer representation of the actual throughput than NPM does.
I'm thinking there might be a conversation factor one could easily apply to the graphed utilization and get a more accurate idea of the true utilization. I hate to say it, but Orion NPM doesn't tell the whole truth with its Interface utilzation graphs.
Here's an example of NPM polling an interface once every ten minutes over twenty-four hours:
Compare the same exact interface bandwidth information polled every ten seconds with an Engineer's Toolset Bandwidth Gauge set to display a historical graph:
Comparing today's information (the right half of each graph), NPM missed the 710Mb/s spike. It reports bandwidth utilized today was between 70 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s.
But the Toolset Bandwidth gauge shows most of the day was spent between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s.
I'd like a way to be confident when I tell Management that a particular Interface has X utilization, and of knowing NPM is off by a certain specific percent.
Have you come up with a Kluge for this? I can't trust NPM for an actual statistic--only a relative one that is averaged. Instead I must keep that Bandwidth Gauge running so I know the real utilization--not what Orion NPM tells me. Otherwise I end up with insufficient pipe purchased, and complaints from the users.
1. What do you use to see the actual bandwidth utilized? NPM? Toolset? Other?
2. How do you verify your information is valid?
3. What X Factor do you apply to NPM's graphs to reflect the true utilization?
Hoping to see some creative answers here! Remember: there are three questions.
Yours,
Rick S.