[smokeping-users] Any downsides to running less probes more frequently?

[David Tomic]

Peter Kristolaitis wrote:
> It is partly the granularity (e.g. 5% vs 20% for a single lost packet).
>   This will tend to skew your loss statistics higher than they actually are.
>
> However, the 'smoke' in your graphs also depends on sufficient sampling
> in order to show a good representation.  With 5 results, you simply
> aren't collecting enough data to show how your network latencies are
> distributed around (in terms of above/below) the mean.
>
> Keep in mind that this tool is designed primarily to see trends and
> problem areas at a high(ish) level -- it's not meant to drill down to
> see e.g. why you get loss at 43 seconds past each minute.
>
> Unless you absolutely need to get alerts within ~60 seconds if a link
> drops, it's generally better to have more samples with longer scan cycles.
>
> - Peter
>   

Alright ... thanks guys.

I think that I might just try running a separate copy of Smokeping on 
another box for a little while, and see how all of that actually pans 
out looking at the two configurations side by side.

Hopefully then I'll actually be able to SEE what sort of differences 
it's going to bring [both good and bad I guess] ... which means that 
I've [hopefully] got a much better chance of actually understanding it 
all properly. ;)

Thanks again for your help everyone!

Regards,
--David Tomic