--------
John Baldwin writes:
> > +When netstat reports every 8 seconds, it tells traffic in bits per second:
> > +
> > +$ netstat -I bge0 8
> > +%
>
> Hmm, I'm pretty sure it's in bytes, and checking the code, it seems like
> show_stat()
> in netstat/if.c just shows the raw delta in values without scaling it by
> 'interval',
> so I think the counts are the number of bytes sent/received in 8 seconds:
And since
bytes/8 seconds == bits/second
Q.E.D
> I do think having a tip about 'netstat -I foo <N>' is useful btw. I'm not
> sure if
> you are trying to do [...]
I have personally used this trick for 35+ years from V.22bis modems
til 10Gbit/s ethernet, to figure out how saturated a particular
transmission facility is.
Transmission media are always in nominal bits per second, and counters
are almost invariably in bytes, so using 8 second integration eliminates
the need for math.
The 8 second integration time also averages most of the burstiness of the
traffic quite nicely.
As the author of the bikeshed email, I should have known better
than to commit something this trivial :-)
Poul-Henning
--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
[email protected] | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
