Question : Ospf Latency

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We have three companies in a hub and spoke topology the main site has a router and the other two sites have routers that connect to the main site.  The type of routers are the Netvanta 1224str and the protocol we are using is Ospf with a bandwidth of 54mbs.  My problem is first of all when i do ping test to any of the other sites after about 30 pings at 1ms it spikes up to about 310ms and times out every once in a while then goes back to normal what could be wrong.  My second question is if my link can only transmit at 54mbs should i set my interface at 54mbs instead of leaving it at 100mbs.

Answer : Ospf Latency

couple of things to check.

1. ping tests aren't necessarily the most reliable. run a traceroute from the Adtran 1224STR and see exactly what node is bottlenecking your connection. it's doubtful that this is related to the OSPF routing. Could just be that one of the other routers is getting an update and is delaying the ping response while it handles that data. iperf is also a good test here to check your real throughput, run it from points at each of the three sites for a long period of time and see what kind of performance you get. This is far more reliable than a simple ping test. Ping is good for connectivity testing but not as a performance testing tool.

2. as far as the interface speeds. What kind of WAN connectivity do you have between each site? 54 Mbps sounds like a good deal of bandwidth and I don't think the NV1224STR has any WAN interfaces bigger than a dual T1. They don't even have a DS3 card for it and that's less than a 52 meg pipe.