Our network here is way larger (1500 switches, 60 routers, 1320 hosts), and we 
poll not only network traffic but also stats for multicast traffic and CPU use 
on the core switches and routers, all at 5min intervals.  There is no 
discernable load on the switches from the SNMP queries.  Of course, our main 
switches are only on about 20% load, but remember that these queries are only 
simple network traffic ones.

Note that, since SNMP is UDP traffic, and low priority to a switch, the SNMP 
queries will simply be dropped in favour of TCP traffic if a link is overloaded 
and not resent.  You'll get greyout on your MRTG graphs (if using routers2) or 
blanks.  Most switches/routers will ignore SNMP queries in favour of forwarding 
packets.

If your network is running at 85% loading I'd say you have other more serious 
issues in capacity planning to deal with!  If a few SNMP queries every 5min 
would cause a network collapse, then you're at far more risk from (eg) someone 
opening a web browser...

Steve

________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Bauguer
Sent: Friday, 10 October 2008 02:32
To: [email protected]
Subject: [mrtg] Can Mrtg cause a Router to crash because of the snmp querys?

Hi,
Im trying to build a traffic analyzer based on Mrtg here for my company, (10 
big routers 80 switches 80 servers Cisco/Nortel).
There was an argument about creating this Mrtg-Server, some people claim it 
would be suicidal, because many of the routers and switches operates with heavy 
traffic and cpu load (about 75-85%) and querying these elements every 5 minutes 
would collapse the network.
Can somebody give me some feedback on this, I personally dont believe that 
querying through snmp every 5 minutes can cause such damage on the network, 
even if they are on high capacity, i think maybe it could cause a small delay 
on the query but nothing else, right?. I have allready worked in a smaller 
enviourment and had no problems, but I need some technical arguments to 
convince these guys,
any ideas?
regards. JB

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