What is the KCall process on the NetVanta 1500/1600 series?

[mblecha]

I have a particular 1531p that is constantly high CPU usage (85-99%). The KCall process is utilizing between 88-95% of the CPU all the time and is using ~1.8GB of memory. This particular unit is switching 2-5Mbps of traffic in very small UDP packets from gig 0/9 to 0/10 for a VM that maintains a fairly constant amount of traffic to 100-150 different remote sites. (Estimated 600-1000 pps).

Anyone have any idea what the KCall process is supposed to handle? Any ideas to reduce it's load?

Thanks,

-Matt

[Anonymous]

Kcall is a task switching process of the operating system, that is allowed to run up to the CPU max as a background process.  

[jefftheavguy]

I am having the same issue. It was nice that jroad (Addtran) told us what it is but I want to know how to reduce this load.

[Anonymous]

This process is related to the traffic on the switch. I was told that this was for traffic hitting an interface(s) on the switch, and have seen this be caused by multicast traffic.  This traffic can be reduced to the CPU with the IGMP snooping feature.

Other kinds of traffic may also cause this Kcall task to run higher, but I have not seen this yet.