Cisco Catalyst switch 9500, 16.12.3: intermittent log messages: %IOSXE_INFRA-5-PUNT_SVC_INVALID_OPT_PKT: Invalid IPv4 options packet punted to RP

[Emir]

Any suggestions what the cause of these intermittent log messages is:

%IOSXE_INFRA-5-PUNT_SVC_INVALID_OPT_PKT: Invalid IPv4 options packet punted to RP

Hw: Cisco Catalyst C9500-48Y4C  switch.

Sw: 16.12.3

Log: the messages appear randomly, about 1x - 5x/day.

There don't seem to be interesting log messages preceding these messages.

CPU: the CPU load seems to be low, averaging about 10 % or lower.

Documentation:

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any helpful documentation about this.

I've also checked for bugs and Release Notes in higher software, but didn't find matches.

I was considering taking a control-plane capture, but without any further pointers this will be looking for a needle in a haystack.

Any help is highly appreciated!

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Possibly it's actually an informational message, not an actual error.  I.e. "invalid" might not have been the best word choice.

The reason I suspect that some IP options would be unusual and the switch's hardware cannot process them, so the packet is sent to the CPU.

So why even generate any message?  Both because processing such packets is much, much slower and it loads up the CPU.

Really being an informational message would dovetail with what @marce1000 wrote.

BTW, software routers have a similar issue, i.e. such packets not interrupt processed but "process" processed.

[CSCO12551800]

Thank you @Joseph W. Doherty and @marce1000 

That makes sense!