[Cisco]What is error for ‘input packets with dribble condition detected’

Tweet

While I was troubleshooting TCP throughput issue today, some of status on the FastEthernet interface brought my attention.

"xxxx input packets with dribble condition detected"

Maybe I didn’t pay attention on the counters in past. I guess b/c of the counters was always "0".

As you can see below, there are "1473 input packets with dribble condition detected" and it was about half of CRC errors.

Actually, dribble condition of packets indicates that an Ethernet frame is slightly too long. This frame indication counter is incremented just for informational purposes; the router will accept the frame.

End of, issue was duplex miss matching with device connected (Old 3Com switch which is non-managed). Once we fixed duplex issue between, no more CRC and dribble condition of packets

Cisco_Router#sh int fastEthernet 0/0
FastEthernet0/0 is up, line protocol is up
  Hardware is DEC21140A, address is 000d.bcc3.2300 (bia 000d.bcc3.2300)
  Internet address is x.x.8.19/24
  MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit/sec, DLY 100 usec,
     reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
  Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set
  Keepalive not set
  Full-duplex, 100Mb/s, 100BaseTX/FX
  ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
  Last input 00:00:20, output 00:00:02, output hang never
  Last clearing of "show interface" counters 00:41:54
  Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 0
  Queueing strategy: fifo
  Output queue: 0/40 (size/max)
  30 second input rate 32000 bits/sec, 29 packets/sec
  30 second output rate 321000 bits/sec, 32 packets/sec
     188397 packets input, 90793914 bytes
     Received 655 broadcasts, 0 runts, 3 giants, 0 throttles
     2939 input errors, 2939 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored
     0 watchdog
     1473 input packets with dribble condition detected
     253276 packets output, 270943962 bytes, 0 underruns
     0 output errors, 0 collisions, 0 interface resets
     0 unknown protocol drops
     0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred
     0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier
     0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out
#