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Catalyst 6509 seeing output drops in one of the port-channel interface

zulkarnain
Level 1
Level 1

Hi All.

We have a 6509 and configured 4 interfaces bundle together into 1 port-channel. We are seeing 1 of the port having more output drops than the other 3. What would be the issue? How to make the output drops decrease? If we set the port with "hold-queue 4096" out would it be help? Any impact on the buffer and the cpu of the switch?

3 Replies 3

Joseph W. Doherty
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

How does that port's usage compare to the other ports in the same Etherchannel?

Realize that if you have a very bandwidth usage intensive flow, it will only use one link, and Etherchannel doesn't take into consideration port usage.  I.e. You can be "unlucky" such that you might have just one or more busy flows that "land" on a particular port, and if it's the same two hosts, especially w/o including 6500 hashing using UDP/TCP ports numbers, the same transmission port will be used over and over.

What might be done, is trying a different hashing algorithm, but improvement is not guaranteed as much depends on the attributes of your traffic.

As to using hold-queue 4K, I forget whether a 6500 really uses that (as much, on switches, is done all with special hardware).  You could try it.  Increasing queue depth often mitigates drops due to transient congestion (like with microbursts), but will not mitigate sustained congestion.  It also can introduce additional queuing latency.