it will display an incrementing total until the interface is reset or the counters cleared. To illustrate this point, I let the router run with the priority queue set too small for an hour, then set the bandwidth value back to 128 Kbps. I waited five minutes to let the counters settle, then executed the command again: R1#sho policy-map interface s0/1 Serial0/1 Service-policy output: WAN Class-map: Voice-RTP (match-any) 20049682 packets, 4089333416 bytes 5 minute offered rate 79000 bps, drop rate 0 bps Match: ip precedence 5 20049682 packets, 4089333416 bytes 5 minute rate 79000 bps Queueing Strict Priority Output Queue: Conversation 264 Bandwidth 128 (kbps) Burst 3200 (Bytes) (pkts matched/bytes matched) 20049682/4089333416 (total drops/bytes drops) 78648/16044192 Chapter 34: The Converged Network The drop rate in the first bold line is now zero, as it should be. However, the last line still shows some very high numbers. If I were to see something like this on a normally healthy link, I would suspect that one of two things had happened: Someone altered the configuration like I just did, but did not clear the counters after resolving the issue. There was a surge of traffic in this queue that exceeded the queue's configured size. In either case, you should try to determine what's happened. If there was a surge of traffic in the priority queue, it's possible that either there were more active phone calls than you anticipated or the active calls were not using the proper CODEC. Even worse, packets might be getting marked as IP precedence 5 when they shouldn't be. If the priority queue is saturated, even if additional capacity is available, packets will still be dropped from the priority queue. The priority queue differs from the other queues in that it will not use the remaining avail- able bandwidth on the link for overflow. When this queue is too small, packets will be dropped. Priority Queue Too Large When the priority queue is too large, it can affect network performance. However, this problem can be very difficu