[hobbit] bandwidth usage in bytes on Linux

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 09:14:43AM -0500, Scott Walters wrote:
> 
> > But it might still make some sense to have the Linux hobbitclient
> > collect the data from /sbin/ifconfig. It does have byte counters:
> >
> > eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0E:A6:CE:D6:85
> >           RX bytes:2210282597 (2.0 GiB)  TX bytes:2268014990 (2.1 GiB)
> 
> > I dont think Hobbit should use these to populate the tcpOutDataBytes and
> > tcpInInorderBytes fields in the netstat rrd - the ifconfig counters are
> > per network interface, where the rest of the netstat data are global
> > counters.
> 
> Correct, and I've never really trusted those counters for 'real bandwidth
> usage'.  I think re-transmissions and other TCP counters need to be added.

Yep ... 

> > But perhaps there should be a completely separate set of RRD files, with
> > one graph per network interface ?
> 
> Yes.  And for the other UNIXes you'll want to to run these local commands
> and send them to the server for parsing:
> 
> AIX|HP-UX: /usr/bin/netstat -v
> 
> Solaris: /usr/bin/kstat -p -s [or]bytes64

Fabulous.

If anyone knows of similar commands to get the interface statistics for 
the *BSD systems, let me know.

> And a 'netstat -i' provides ethernet layer stats that can be useful.  Not
> for bandwidth, but Input Errors and Output Errors are never a good thing.
> 
> Henrik, do you need sample outputs to do the parsing on the server?

I think I can get most of these myself, but if you have them available
do send me a copy - it will save me having to hunt them down.


Regards,
Henrik