$re = '/Broadcast traffic on has exceeded the set boundary/';
$str = 'Broadcast traffic on gi1/0/3 has exceeded the set boundary 1Kbits';
$subst = "12";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str, 1);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php