Here's a quote from the
GNS3 Network Simulation Guide that might help you understand Idle-max and Idle-sleep.
Quote:
You will also see options here for IDLE-MAX and IDLE-SLEEP. These are also related to the Idle-PC value. Dynamips doesn't go to sleep every time the program counter hits the Idle-PC. It waits until it has hit the Idle-PC Idle-Max times before sleeping for Idle-Sleep milliseconds. That way the router still gets a chance to do the things it needs to do between visits to the Idle-PC value. If you adjust the Idle-Max too low or the Idle-Sleep too high, your emulated routers will slow down to a crawl, they will lose connections with their neighbors and bad things will happen.
So if you lower the Idle-Max value, your router is going to do a lot more sleeping that it would if you didn't change it. Which of course results in the router taking much longer to do things but of course it also means you CPU gets a cool ride too, because your router is not asking it to do stuff so often. Getting the right balance is a dark art indeed.
Disclaimer: I am the author of the
GNS3 Network Simulation Guide
_________________
RedNectarhttp://rednectar.net@rednectarchrisGNS3 WorkBench-a VMware image of Ubuntu with GNS3 and VPCS installed and a collection of exercises/labs