On my Linux boxes I see spikes occasionally in the values collected for net.if.in and net.if.out. These spike values are outside the range the physical transport hardware can even carry. For example I will see a spike of like 350Gbps. Usual load is around 3-5Mbps. The problem is that these spikes make the graphs useless when they include a time period including one of the spikes. I was just wondering if anyone else has seen similar and what they might have done to correct/circumvent the problem. These are all RHEL boxes including the zabbix server. What am I doing wrong? The only thing I notice is that there is consistently a 10 second interval from the previous data collection when the "bad" metric is collected as opposed to the normal collection interval of 5 seconds.

Item Descriptions and exports:

Network-eth0-IN net.if.in[eth0,bytes] 5 7 365 ZABBIX agent Active
Network-eth0-OUT net.if.out[eth0,bytes] 5 7 365 ZABBIX agent Active

<item type="0" key="net.if.in[eth0,bytes]" value_type="0">
<description>Network-$1-IN</description>
<delay>5</delay>
<history>7</history>
<trends>365</trends>
<units>bps</units>
<multiplier>1</multiplier>
<delta>1</delta>
<formula>8</formula>
<snmp_port>161</snmp_port>
</item>

<item type="0" key="net.if.out[eth0,bytes]" value_type="0">
<description>Network-$1-OUT</description>
<delay>5</delay>
<history>7</history>
<trends>365</trends>
<units>bps</units>
<multiplier>1</multiplier>
<delta>1</delta>
<formula>8</formula>
<snmp_port>161</snmp_port>
</item>

Here are example data collection items when these occur:

2007.Oct.26 09:09:24 2061299.2000
2007.Oct.26 09:09:19 752688.0000
2007.Oct.26 09:09:14 125880.0000
2007.Oct.26 09:09:10 155951132954.6667
2007.Oct.26 09:08:59 415083.2000
2007.Oct.26 09:08:54 797884.8000
2007.Oct.26 09:08:49 611404.0000

2007.Oct.26 05:30:39 73660.8000
2007.Oct.26 05:30:34 37859.2000
2007.Oct.26 05:30:29 589180.8000
2007.Oct.26 05:30:24 186098273800.0000
2007.Oct.26 05:30:14 160400.0000
2007.Oct.26 05:30:09 82140.8000
2007.Oct.26 05:30:04 1401803.2000

2007.Oct.25 11:46:39 280332.0000
2007.Oct.25 11:46:35 700073.3333
2007.Oct.25 11:46:29 220990983652.0000
2007.Oct.25 11:46:19 749732.8000
2007.Oct.25 11:46:14 468668.8000
2007.Oct.25 11:46:09 337068.8000