You are experiencing low throughput from a Java producer.

Low I/O thread activity with blocked throughput often indicates thatproducer callbacks are consuming too much time, causing the sender thread to block while waiting for onCompletion() to finish.

FromKafka Producer Performance Guide:

“Expensive logic in callbacks (e.g., I/O or complex computation) can block the sender thread, reducing throughput.”

Compression (A) may slightly impact CPU but not I/O thread usage.

Large batches (B) improve throughput if managed correctly.

A Layer 2 network issue (C) would lead to packet loss, not specifically low callback metrics.