What are throttles....

[VeeDubbs]

This may be a simple question, but...

Can someone give me a simple explanation of what a throttle is in networking terms. Thanks!

 

[tskiller]

er thats kind of a general question, but usually "throttleing" is when you limits a programs max bandwidth. I do it when im downloading, i make my download manager no faster then 200KBPS down so i still have 50 or so for my online games. Anyone, correct me if im wrong!!!

 

[VeeDubbs]

er thats kind of a general question, but usually "throttleing" is when you limits a programs max bandwidth. I do it when im downloading, i make my download manager no faster then 200KBPS down so i still have 50 or so for my online games. Anyone, correct me if im wrong!!!

Sorry bout that...

I'm just wondering exaclty what it means on a Cisco switch, such as:

FastEthernet0/5 is up, line protocol is up
Hardware is Fast Ethernet, address is 0006.2804.a405 (bia 0006.2804.a405)
MTU 1500 bytes, BW 10000 Kbit, DLY 1000 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set
Keepalive not set
Half-duplex, 10Mb/s, 100BaseTX/FX
ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
Last input never, output 00:00:00, output hang never
Last clearing of "show interface" counters never
Queueing strategy: fifo
Output queue 0/40, 0 drops; input queue 0/75, 0 drops
5 minute input rate 2000 bits/sec, 1 packets/sec
5 minute output rate 9000 bits/sec, 8 packets/sec
2920735 packets input, 443348974 bytes
Received 32125 broadcasts, 0 runts, 0 giants, 0 throttles
0 input errors, 0 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored
0 watchdog, 2725 multicast
0 input packets with dribble condition detected
21261209 packets output, 1680743125 bytes, 0 underruns
1 output errors, 647896 collisions, 3 interface resets
0 babbles, 1 late collision, 14749 deferred
0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier
0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out

0 throttles is good I'm assuming, right?

So is a throttle when that specific port sends out an enormous amount of data at one time...or something like that?

EDIT: Ok, what I'm really trying to say is (I'm still tired and can't think straight right now!!) if a throttle (or 2 or however many) were to appear on any port, what exactly is that indicating? Thanks

 

[Nostradamus]

From cisco.com (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/650/41.html)

In the show source-bridge command output:

The throttles counter increments when the interface fails to obtain a buffer for an inbound packet.

The throttles counter that increments in the show interfaces command output correlates to a misses counter that increments in the show buffers command output. The appropriate buffer pool may be tuned.