[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v3 00/11] Port XStats

[Kyle Larose]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Thomas Monjalon
<thomas.monjalon at 6wind.com> wrote:

> I don't understand.
> The basic statistics are provided in a common API.
> The other ones are not available in every NICs and can only be interpreted
> while knowing the device. So what is the need exactly?

The need is to provide information to users about what sort of traffic
is being seen by the device, and why the hardware is behaving the way
it is, leveraging as much as possible the capabilities of the hardware
with minimal effort (i.e. not implementing an abstraction layer at a
higher level).

These are quite useful for diagnosing wider network issues
(configuration, misbehaving devices, dirty fibers/etc). The common API
doesn't expose the more detailed information requested by the various
ethernet mibs. Of course, not all stats are applicable to all devices
(e.g. collisions), but those that are available are still invaluable.

> Do you know an example of a networking layer having this kind of API?

I have worked with SDKs for a few different physical switches and
NPUs. They all provide this sort of API. I think it is quite common
with networking equipment such as routers or switches. These stats
tend to be exposed over SNMP at the very least, and often within local
utilities on the devices themselves.

Thanks,

Kyle