If you are seeing periodic network spikes you might want to check the compactionQueues to see if major compactions are happening.

See Section 2.5.2.8, “Managed Compactions” for more information on managing compactions.

HBase expects the loopback IP Address to be 127.0.0.1. See the Getting Started section on Section 2.1.2.3, “Loopback IP”.

Are all the network interfaces functioning correctly? Are you sure? See the Troubleshooting Case Study in Section 12.14, “Case Studies”.