[Xymon] Increasing --ping-tasks makes TCP Connection Times more plausible

[Lars Kollstedt]

Hi List,

I experienced a bit strange behavior with xymonnet. I wondered for a long time 
about the high (and place uncorrelated) values in the "TCP Connections Times" 
graph. peer1.sara.ams (which is about 600km away from our xymon-Server) had 
the same 40ms (sometimes even only 20ms) as core1.sm.tu.da (which is 2 racks 3 
devices away).

Last week I played with the ping-task parameter on the xymonnet Commandline in 
tasks.cfg. And this changed the value for core1.sm.tu.da from 40ms to 761,4µs, 
which ist much more like the Ping RTT. The times for peer1.sara.ams changed 
from 20ms to 11ms, which also much more plausible.

kollstedt at nms:~$ ping -c 2 core1.sm.tu.da.man-da.net
PING core1.sm.tu.da.man-da.net (82.195.67.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from core1.sm.tu.da.man-da.net (82.195.67.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 
time=0.634 ms
64 bytes from core1.sm.tu.da.man-da.net (82.195.67.1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 
time=0.629 ms

--- core1.sm.tu.da.man-da.net ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.629/0.631/0.634/0.025 ms

kollstedt at nms:~$ ping -c 2 peer1.sara.ams.man-da.net
PING peer1.sara.ams.man-da.net (82.195.67.14) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from peer1.sara.ams.man-da.net (82.195.67.14): icmp_seq=1 ttl=250 
time=6.40 ms
64 bytes from peer1.sara.ams.man-da.net (82.195.67.14): icmp_seq=2 ttl=250 
time=6.39 ms

--- peer1.sara.ams.man-da.net ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.397/6.400/6.404/0.080 ms


But I'm worrying about this behavior. Does xymonnet take the time waiting for 
a ping thread into the time measurement? Or is there an other reason for this 
behavior.

Kind regards
	Lars

-- 
Lars Kollstedt

Telefon: +49 6151 16-71027
E-Mail:  lk at man-da.de

man-da.de GmbH
Dolivostraße 11
64293 Darmstadt

Sitz der Gesellschaft: Darmstadt
Amtsgericht Darmstadt, HRB 9484
Geschäftsführer: Andreas Ebert
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