How to measure broadcasts

[bmisenor]

Hi,

In lieu of a protocol analyzer, how can I measure the total percentage of broadcasts when considering overall network reliability? Let's say the threshhold for broadcasts is 20% of total traffic. And the calculation is to divide total broadcasts by total frames. 'Sh interface' output give the number of broadcasts, but the total number of frames. Where can I find the total number of frames? This is for a FastEth on a c7200.

Thnx.

[fmachoka]

show interface statistics are for troubleshooting purposes. your best tool would be to use a protocol analyzer.

[Tsasbrink]

I agree on that but i would like to add that it is important to measure in a real life situation because when you would measure a almost idle network the percatige of broadcasts tends to be mutch higher because of intermittend connections like snmp polls are low in frame count but if used with an interval of more than 3 minutes could give you relativly very high broadcast percentige (arp's) with no problem being present in your network what so ever.

So be sure what you are measuring.