hi Jose,
show proc cpu doesn't give much information about
how many traffic is really switched by the switch itself. Most switches nowadays do the forwarding
of all traffic in hardware and the show proc cpu
is just an indication how busy the processor is with
managing the switch rather then actually forwarding
traffic, so it might give you misleading information
Per switch it's different to see how much load
the switch is actually forwarding and if it's being
overloaded or not.
The looad led on the switches should be pretty reliable and give you a good indication of it.
(show system on CatOS also gives that info
via the CLI with a peak threshold as well)
It's also important to know where this device is
in the network.
With the Core you tend to be able to generate a lot
of traffic that needs a lot of switching power.
If you have a device however that is in the acces
layer or the distribution then also the links to the rest of the network that come into play.
If for example you have a switch that is hosting 48
powerfull servers connect via FastEthernet and hook
up this device redundantly to the core of your
network then you have a 4.8 to 1 oversubscription
of that link. So even if your switch would have more
then enough power left to forward even more traffic
that specific Gigabit Link will be overloaded.
So in stead of verifying if the switch is struggling
you might just wanna verify how badly the links are loaded (show interface).
For the switch load itself i would suggest to just
look up how much it's spec'd up to do and then
check if you risk overloading it.
merry xmas and best wishes to you too
/Michel
