When the volume of data traffic exceeds the switch's processing capacity, it can result in congestion, packet loss, and increased latency, ultimately causing disruptions in connectivity. We have a small server room with two core switches that have fiber links to our access switches in our different departments and Ethernet links to a few other switches and devices in the server room. Recently, we've had some complaints about slowness accessing some resources in our virtualized. Recently, we encountered a case involving a Cisco C9500 core switch experiencing high latency affecting internal servers communicating with external destinations. The initial symptoms pointed towards a classic network bottleneck, but the root cause turned out to be a less obvious configuration. Latency is the delay between a data packet leaving its source and reaching its destination, and it is a fundamental measure of network responsiveness. Ethernet switch. Intermittent latency with high ping, pings on my machine are all over the place ranging from 5ms to 300ms (Reported by end users as slowness when accessing websites) Speedtest on the machines isn't great and shows download latency go over 3000ms (overall speed is good but high ping latency). High latency to gateway and ISP when multiple switches are connected – possible pfSense overload? I've been troubleshooting a pfSense issue for about two weeks and I'm running out of ideas, so I'd really appreciate some guidance. You may also want to know:.