Saving router resources

[wdugger]

I was told by someone that router interfaces that are not being used should be admin shutdown because they use router resources. I have never heard of this before and really have not found any type of documentation to substantiate this person’s statement. Has anyone ever heard of this?

Thanks

[tbaranski]

It's hard to imagine an unused interface's resource usage being significant.

Usually unused ports are shutdown for security reasons.

[Richard Burts]

In absolute terms the person who told you this was correct. An interface that is not shutdown does use resources. This would include things like doing keepalives on the interface or if some device on the media connected to the interface were to send a broadcast message the router would process it.

But I think that Terry was correct. I think you would have to use a very powerful microscope to see the impact on router performance from the unused interface. It is much more common to shutdown unused interfaces as a security measure.

HTH

Rick

[lrian]

Shutting down unused interfaces is also a good administration practice.

* Less manual labor for your ops center people. Instead of maintaining a list of interfaces to monitor just tell them to alert on ifAdminStatus != down && ifOperStatus != up

* Easier manual checks. Do a

sh ip interface brief

and any interface with protocol=down and status!=admin down is a problem

Lee