What is late frame and early frame?

get counter statistics

The incoming packets to the Ethernet port are to be freed in sequential order. There are circumstances where these packets are not being free in order and will cause the early frame and/or late frame counters to increase. This could happen when there are a burst of traffic come into a particular Ethernet port.

Example:
1. Assume that packets 1,2,3 and 4 arrived at Ethernet port E1.
2. Packets 1 and 2 went through all the different packet processing stages and are ready to send out via Ethernet port E2.
3. Packet 3 is process by the firewall and assume that it is denied by the policy configuration, the packet will be dropped and the buffer use to keep this packet will be free. In this case, the early frame counter will be increase by one.
4. Now, packet 1 and 2 was sent out via E1. The late frame counter will be increase by two.
5. Packet 4 going through all the packet processing stages and was sent out via E2 as expected.