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NIC MAC Rx. w/ Pause Command

Hi,
I was looking in the Control Suite software included with the NIC in our server, and noticed this item listed in the Statistics section for activity on the NIC:
MAC Rx w/ Pause Command and Length = 0
The value listed for this item was about 10% of the total number of frames transmitted. I have not been able to determine if this is normal and desirable, or a problem. Can someone enlighten me as to what this information means?
Thanks!

NetFixr-Dani

Is this a very busy server? Do you have graphs of this port from the switch side?

Sounds like the server is regularly sending a high rate of traffic, and the switch is trying to throttle by sending pause frames.

NetFixr-Dani

Oops, hit "submit" too soon, sorry.

If you see a high rate of traffic from this server, then yes it is normal for flow control to kick in this way.

If it concerns you, try disabling flow control on the switch upstream and see if those counters decrease. In some cases, however, this may affect your overall network performance.

- Dani

westone

ASKER

Yes, it is a busy server running a business database app, plus everything else the business needs. The switch is unmanaged, so there is no configuring anything on it.
My question was to find whether or not I should be concerned about it. I didn't know what it was.

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NetFixr-Dani

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westone

ASKER

Thanks for the advice!