Digital network interfaces use serial transmission to send data from the transmission port to the receive port on the other end of the communications channel or circuit. Some transmission channels, such as copper Gigabit Ethernet, aggregate serial data across multiple channels to establish their overall circuit capacity. For copper Gigabit Ethernet, 4 channels of 250 Mbps are used to establish the 1-Gbps Ethernet circuit.
Most digital interfaces are full-duplex. The term means that they can transmit outbound data at the same moment that they are receiving inbound data. Because data transmission and data reception are independent interface tasks, they are reported separately.
Interface Utilization represents the average amount of data that is transmitted by the interface in a single direction (In or Out), divided by the interface bandwidth, or capacity. Interface utilization can be expressed as a percentage or as a transmission rate in bits per-second (bps).
Interface utilization rates can contribute to network performance issues. For a given interface, monitor whether it is transmitting frames at or below the rate at which it is receiving them. Acceptable interface utilization rates also depend on various SLAs and failover scenarios within your network. For example, two interfaces use a load-sharing algorithm to balance outbound traffic to the next hop. The average interface utilization must remain low enough that a failure of one link does not saturate the remaining available link, which now transmits all data.
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