Werk #22092: Network interfaces: minimum traffic for percentual packet rate levels
| Component | Checks & agents | ||
| Title | Network interfaces: minimum traffic for percentual packet rate levels | ||
| Date | Aug 5, 2026 | ||
| Level | Trivial Change | ||
| Class | New Feature | ||
| Compatibility | Compatible - no manual interaction needed | ||
| Checkmk versions & editions |
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The ruleset Network interfaces and switch ports offers percentual levels for the packet rates, namely for error, discards, unicast, non-unicast, multicast and broadcast rates.
On interfaces with very little traffic, a handful of packets can already account for a large share of the overall traffic. Percentual levels then report WARN or CRIT even though the absolute traffic volume is negligible. A typical example are WAN backup links, which are up but only carry hello or keepalive packets.
For each of these packet rates, the new option Percentual levels, if minimum traffic reached is now available. Besides the warning and critical levels, it takes a minimum traffic value, expressed as a percentage of the operating speed of the interface. The levels are only applied if the used bandwidth of the respective direction reaches this minimum traffic. Below it, no alert is raised, regardless of the packet rate. The service details then state that the levels were not applied.
The minimum traffic is configured individually per packet rate, next to that rate's own warning and critical levels. It defaults to 5%.
If the operating speed of the interface is unknown, the used bandwidth cannot be related to it at all, so the minimum traffic can never be reached. The levels are not applied in this case either. If only the traffic counters are missing, the levels are applied as usual.
While the levels are not applied, the packet rate metric is reported without its threshold lines, so the corresponding graph shows no warning or critical boundary.
Existing configurations are not affected.