CISCO-SWITCH-HARDWARE-CAPACITY-MIB

MIB Reference — IPNetwork Monitor · Updated September 09, 2026

All MIBsCISCO-SWITCH-HARDWARE-CAPACITY-MIB

Organization: Cisco Systems, Inc.

Last Updated: 2016-08-17

Category: Cisco Devices, Hardware and Environment

Description: Monitors switch hardware resource capacity including TCAM entries, MAC tables, and ASIC resource utilization.

Start monitoring vendor-neutral, standards-based MIB, any SNMPv3-capable network device (SNMP engine identity/boot/clock status) with a free 30-day trial of IPNetwork Monitor. Import MIBs, browse SNMP OIDs, create custom SNMP monitors, configure alerts, and monitor any SNMP-enabled network device from a single console.

What Is CISCO-SWITCH-HARDWARE-CAPACITY-MIB?

This is a Cisco enterprise MIB for monitoring internal hardware forwarding-resource capacity on Cisco ASIC-based switching platforms such as Catalyst and Nexus switches. It exposes data on CAM/TCAM table usage, MAC address table utilization (used/total/multicast/unicast entries and collisions), and VPN CAM table usage tied to forwarding, rate-limiting, and QoS hardware features. Its monitoring value is squarely about hardware status rather than environmental sensors: it tracks how full fixed-size internal ASIC tables are, since exhaustion of MAC or TCAM tables causes flooding, dropped forwarding entries, or hardware-programming failures long before CPU or memory alarms would fire. It is a Cisco-proprietary module not derived from a public IETF standard, though it is often deployed alongside other Cisco switching and QoS MIBs on the same platform. Typical deployment is NOC-level capacity monitoring of Catalyst/Nexus switches to catch MAC table or TCAM exhaustion before it causes an outage. Network engineers evaluating or troubleshooting this functionality can download the CISCO-SWITCH-HARDWARE-CAPACITY-MIB file directly to load it into their MIB browser.

IPNetwork Monitor allows you to monitor SNMP objects defined in CISCO-SWITCH-HARDWARE-CAPACITY-MIB. Use the built-in SNMP Monitoring Browser to explore available variables, view their current values and descriptions, and select the objects you want to monitor. You can then create SNMP monitors, configure thresholds, and receive alerts when monitored values change.

Supported Devices

  • Cisco Catalyst switches
  • Cisco Nexus switches
  • Cisco ASIC-based Layer 2/3 switching platforms

Monitoring Examples

Polling cshcMacUsageTable/cshcMacUsageEntry yields cshcMacUsed against cshcMacTotal so an admin can compute percent-full and alert as it nears cshcMacLinesFull, while cshcMacCollisions flags hashing collisions in the CAM. The cshcVpnCamUsageTable/cshcVpnCamUsageEntry rows with cshcVpnCamUsed similarly track VRF/VPN-specific CAM entry consumption as MPLS VPN routes are learned. A rapid rise in cshcMacUsed toward cshcMacTotal, especially with an abnormal skew between cshcMacMcast and cshcMacUcast, is a classic signature of a MAC flooding attack or a spanning-tree loop.

What Can Be Monitored

  • MAC address table utilization
  • TCAM/CAM entry usage
  • VPN CAM table usage
  • MAC table hash collisions
  • unicast vs. multicast MAC entry counts
  • hardware forwarding resource capacity
Imported Objects

From CISCO-QOS-PIB-MIB

Percent

From CISCO-SMI

ciscoMgmtOBJECT-IDENTITY

From CISCO-TC

CiscoInterfaceIndexList

From ENTITY-MIB

entPhysicalIndexOBJECT-TYPE

From HCNUM-TC

CounterBasedGauge64

From IF-MIB

InterfaceIndexOrZero
ifIndexOBJECT-TYPE

From INET-ADDRESS-MIB

InetAddressType

From SNMP-FRAMEWORK-MIB

SnmpAdminString

From SNMPv2-CONF

MODULE-COMPLIANCE
OBJECT-GROUP

From SNMPv2-SMI

Counter32
Counter64
Gauge32
Integer32
MODULE-IDENTITY
OBJECT-TYPE
Unsigned32

From SNMPv2-TC

DateAndTime
TEXTUAL-CONVENTION

How to Use in IPNetwork Monitor

Example using cshcMacCollisions OID:

Select a Cisco Catalyst/Nexus ASIC-based Layer 2/3 switching platform as the target host to create a monitor — the SNMP service should be up and running on it. Click New Monitor, then check SNMP Custom on the Favorites tab, click Next, and confirm the host. On the next page, click Select... to open the built-in SNMP MIB Browser and type cshcMacCollisions into the Find box to locate it in the OID tree, selecting the specific row/instance you want to monitor since this is a table column, then select it and click OK. This object indicates the number of Ethernet frames whose source MAC address the switching engine failed to learn while constructing its MAC table. On the monitor's Main parameters page you can set the target's SNMP port (default 161), credentials, polling interval, and other settings — see the SNMP Monitor help for details. On the State conditions and Alerting tabs, configure when the monitor should change state and trigger an alert; since this is a Counter32-type OID, Value bounds is the most useful condition here — trigger an alert if the counter increases between polls, since a rising count of errors, failures, or discards often points to a real underlying problem. Click Finish to create the monitor; you can adjust any parameter later.
OIDs

RFC description

Reports hardware capacity of Cisco switches including CAM, TCAM, FIB and QoS resources.

Start monitoring Cisco Catalyst/Nexus ASIC-based Layer 2/3 switching platforms with a free 30-day trial of IPNetwork Monitor. Import MIBs, browse SNMP OIDs, create custom SNMP monitors, configure alerts, and monitor any SNMP-enabled network device from a single console.

Download CISCO-SWITCH-HARDWARE-CAPACITY-MIB