Hello A high cpu load from my guests causes internet packets to be dropped. Please may I have some help fixing this problem. When guest CPU load is high and internet ingress comes from an intermediate functional block (IFB), care of Shorewall, packets are dropped. For example, when I $ ping -i .5 <isp name> And when the 2x4 CPU cores are occupied: <hostname> ~ # date && netstat -i | head -n 3 Mon Aug 5 14:22:34 EST 2013 Kernel Interface table Iface MTU RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg ifb0 1500 319098 0 0 0 319098 0 2248 0 BORU <hostname> ~ # date && netstat -i | head -n 3 Mon Aug 5 14:22:39 EST 2013 Kernel Interface table Iface MTU RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg ifb0 1500 319118 0 0 0 319118 0 2268 0 BORU That is under high CPU load internet traffic basically stops. When guest CPU load is high and ingress comes from a normal PPP interface packets are not dropped. Finally, when CPU load is high from the host and ingress comes from ifb0 packets are not dropped. What changes are needed to prevent a high guest CPU load, when combined with an IFB ingress interface, from dropping packets? Regards Fog_Watch uname -a Linux <hostname> 3.9.5-vs2.3.6.5 #8 SMP Mon Jul 15 17:16:49 EST 2013 x86_64 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5345 @ 2.33GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux -- "A. Because it breaks the logical order of conversation. Q. Why is top posting bad?"