I am reposting (and updating) this because I didn't get any responses in the "Remote Access" section.
I am watching a strange phenomenon on my router here. Just for background, the router is a 7507 with RSP doing CEF (no dCEF or VIPs) running 12.1(21). It is used as a remote access server. It has an ISDN PRI card for dialup remote accesses, a couple of Ethernets, and a bunch of other bits&pieces.
I have a dialer interface which is bound to a 'B' channel because I received a call on the 'B' channel. Now, when I do a show int dialer 21 I get an output that lists not only the dialer interface, but the bound 'B' channel interface as well. So far so good.
The first thing I see that is not quite right is that the 'B' channel is showing txload=3/255 and rxload=247/255. Nothing unusual about that; they dialed in to deposit a file on an FTP server. But if I look at the Dialer inteface, I see txload=1/255 and rxload=1/255. This in spite of the fact that the packet and octet counts are tracking correctly between the two interfaces. The implications are interesting. It means that if I had dialer load-threshold on the dialer interface, it would not open a second call even though the line is saturated. But I suppose you could argue that that is what the doctor ordered, because it was the remote that opened the call.
On outgoing calls, I do not see this phnomenon. That is, the txload and rxload values track correctly between the dialer interface and the 'B' channel interface.
But my real problem comes when I try and look at the packet and octet counts using SNMP. The counts on 'B' channel interface are racking up as you would expect, but the counts on the dialer interface are stuck at the values they were at the start of the call. Then at the end of the call they increment suddenly by the total of the call. This is not good if you have a long call and you are using the octet counts to calculate the throughput: you get no load during the call, and then a peak of several thousand % at the end. It makes for interesting load graphs.
This anomolous behaviour, only incrementing the counters at the end of the call, applies equally to incoming and outgoing connection. But I have seen (and I cannot remember when) dialup connections that increment the counters on the fly during the call. But I do not know what was different then. Perhaps it was when PPP mutlilink was in operation.
Has anyone else observed this, and does anyone know a workaround? I am not interested in generating graphs per 'B' channel, I am interested in generating load graphs per remote client.
Any input appreciated.
Kevin Dorrell
Luxembourg
