Help with bandwidth killer

[oneirishpollack]

Hi All,

My issue is my edge router or at least the bandwidth that is being used. I have a DS3 link and a Cisco 3845 router. The bandwidth on the outside interface is hitting 100% utilization (based on Solarwinds monitoring). This is seen primarily in two ways – slow Internet downloads and interactive video sessions that are buffering or of poor quality.

I have the following tools – SolarWinds Engineering Toolset and OmniPeek’s Network Analyzer.

Our network is all interconnected by a core aggregate switch. The edge router, VoIP router, and  firewall are interconnected using the core aggregate and separate VLANs. The internal network is routed using a L3 core switch (3750) which is connected to the firewall’s inside interface. Each trunk link on the core switch is connected to an aggregate switch in a closet. The aggregate closet switches connect all the access switches.

I am monitoring the trunk interfaces from the aggregate switches to the core, looking for excessive bandwidth and seeing how it correlates with the outside interface on my edge router.

Ultimately my goal is to find out what device(s) are Tx or Rx the data that is killing my DS3 link.

What strategies or methods would you recommend I use to efficiently and thoroughly solve this puzzle?

Thanks.

[Robert Pavone]

You could use NetFlow to capture the TopX talkers and the type of data that is traversing the DS3 link as well as the traffic mix traversing the internal network downstream from the DS3 link.  If you have the Cisco Tools piece in the Solarwinds Engineering Toolset there is a utility called NetFlow Realtime.

Rob