Router / Protocol Problem

Wed Sep 6 15:19:56 UTC 2006

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Mike Walter wrote:

> Thanks for everyone's great input.  Here are answers to Justin's
> questions.
>
> #1 - 12.3.6a - 7204VXR (NPE400) 512MB - 200+ MB free
> #2 - 12.2.15T5 - cisco 7204VXR (NPE225) - 256MB (I have a NPE400 - 512MB
> I want to swap in) - 23MB Free (Issue?)
>
> Full Routes from all peers.  No internal routing protocol as of yet, all
> static routes.  Getting ready to implement OSPF.  I have not rebooted
> the routers as a test.  I have CEF on both routers.  I have had some
> customers complaining about slowness.

That NPE-225 could be the culprit.  23 MB free is workable, but definitely 
low.  I see that router is running 12.2.15T5.  T train IOS releases are 
where features are normally introduced first and are often more buggy than 
mainline IOS releases.  I wouldn't be surprised if that release has some 
memory leaks that is exacerbating your issue.  If you graph memory 
utilization with MRTG or some other handy graphing tool, memory leaks 
often show up as a pronounced 'saw-tooth' pattern when you look at the 
utilization over time.

Also, how badly is the CPU getting hit on that NPE-225?  Since you're 
carrying full routes, I wouldn't be surprised to see the BGP Scanner 
process beating your CPU up every 60-ish seconds.  What does the output of 
"show proc cpu hist" show you?  If you have lots of spikes up to 100% 
peak utilization in the history graphs, then that can definitely be a 
source of latency.

jms