what is an Internal port and why it has so much drops

[sean3]

greetings all,

I got the information as following from FortiSwitch, what is an Internal port and the usual reason why it shows so much drops?

Port(internal) is Admin up, line protocol is up
Interface Type is Pass Through without PHY
Address is E8:ED:D6:51:77:14,
MTU 10000 bytes, Encapsulation IEEE 802.3/Ethernet-II
full-duplex, 1000 Mb/s, link type is auto
input : 13316481778 bytes, 82631689 packets, 0 errors, 481076 drops, 0 oversizes
42314 unicasts, 55849479 multicasts, 26739896 broadcasts, 0 unknowns
output : 252618470 bytes, 1781502 packets, 0 errors, 0 drops, 0 oversizes
25319 unicasts, 1754202 multicasts, 1981 broadcasts
0 fragments, 0 undersizes, 0 collisions, 0 jabbers

thanks you.

[ebilcari · Accepted solution]

The internal port is used as a management port for the switch and will handle only management traffic. Depending on the switch model its behavior may change if the switch includes a dedicated management port.