View source for Template:FAQ:Agent 34

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No.  Unfortunately, the original definition of the various CPU statistics
was a little vague.  It referred to a ''"percentage"'', without specifying
what period this should be calculated over.  It was therefore
implemented slightly differently on different architectures.

The 5.4 release has clarified the situation, and standardised on
calculating these percentages over a minute.  The relevant MIB
descriptions have been updated to make the desired behaviour
more explicit.

The Net-SNMP agent also includes ''"raw counters"'', which can be used to
calculate the percentage usage over any desired period.  This is
the ''"right"'' way to handle things in the SNMP model.  The original
percentage objects have been deprecated, and may possibly be removed
in a future release of the agent.

Note that this is different from the Unix load average, which is
available via the <CODE>loadTable</CODE>, and is supported on all
architectures.