Interface counters show zero input/output

[rpeasah]

What does it mean when you see this all the time on your catalyst 2950 switch even though the switch is passing traffic?

5 minute input rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec

5 minute output rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec

[lgijssel]

It means that there is very little traffic. Please note that the counter is an average over the last five mins.

When the five-minute interval is below one packets/s it is rounded down to zero.

[rpeasah]

I cleared the counters on the interface and watched over five mins and the 5 min input/output still shows zero. See below:

FastEthernet0/17 is up, line protocol is up

Hardware is Fast Ethernet, address is 000a.f465.5891 (bia 000a.f465.5891)

MTU 1500 bytes, BW 100000 Kbit, DLY 1000 usec,

reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255

Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set

Keepalive set (10 sec)

Full-duplex, 100Mb/s

input flow-control is off, output flow-control is off

ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00

Last input 00:00:10, output 00:00:01, output hang never

Last clearing of "show interface" counters 00:05:52

Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 0

Queueing strategy: fifo

Output queue :0/40 (size/max)

5 minute input rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec

5 minute output rate 0 bits/sec, 0 packets/sec

126 packets input, 15627 bytes, 0 no buffer

Received 6 broadcasts, 0 runts, 0 giants, 0 throttles

0 input errors, 0 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored

0 watchdog, 6 multicast, 0 pause input

0 input packets with dribble condition detected

3554 packets output, 1344813 bytes, 0 underruns

0 output errors, 0 collisions, 0 interface resets

0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred

0 lost carrier, 0 no carrier, 0 PAUSE output

0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out