Description: The interval in seconds over which the data is sampled for each bucket in the part of the media-specific table associated with this historyControlEntry. This interval can be set to any number of seconds between 1 and 3600 (1 hour).

Because the counters in a bucket may overflow at their maximum value with no indication, a prudent manager will take into account the possibility of overflow in any of the associated counters. It is important to consider the minimum time in which any counter could overflow on a particular media type and set the historyControlInterval object to a value less than this interval. This is typically most important for the 'octets' counter in any media-specific table. For example, on an Ethernet network, the etherHistoryOctets counter could overflow in about one hour at the Ethernet's maximum utilization.