eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by NetworkInterfaceTest

The NetworkInterfaceTest monitors critical metrics relating to the Network interfaces of a target server/network device using MIB-II support provided by the server/device.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Availability Indicates the availability of this network interface   This measure reports the following states while reporting the operational status of this network interface.

Numeric value State
0 No
100 Yes
200 No - admin turned off
300 Dormant
400 Not Present
500 Lower layer down

Note:

By default, this measure reports one of the States listed in the table above to indicate the status of this network interface. The graph of this measure however, represents the same using the numeric equivalents - 0 to 300.

Data_xmit_rate Indicates the rate of data being transmitted from the network interface over a network link. Mbps This measurement depicts the workload on a network link.
Data_recvd_rate The rate of data being received by the network interface over a network link. Mbps This measure also characterizes the workload on a network link.
Speed Speed of the network interface Mbps This is a static setting - in other words, it is a value that is explicitly set for a network interface through tools such as Cisco admin interface or through commands. This value will hence NOT change with time. eG uses this value to compute the percentage bandwidth usage of a network interface. This value cannot be used to determine how well the network interface is working.

If you think that the above value is incorrect for a network interface, you can use the “bandwidth” interface sub-command of Cisco IOS (provided the network device being monitored is a Cisco device) to manually set the correct speed values for each network interface.
Pct_bandwidth_used Indicates the percentage utilization of the bandwidth available over a network link Percent A value close to 100% indicates a network bottleneck.

The speed of a network interface is based on the value of its SNMP MIB-II variable, which is set using router-specific commands (e.g., the "bandwidth" command of a Cisco router). When a network interface has a fixed maximum speed limit (e.g., Ethernet), the percentage bandwidth will be <= 100%.

In some instances, service providers offer a minimum committed information rate (CIR). In such cases, the speed of the network interface is not fixed and may be set to the minimum CIR.  Since user traffic may be in excess of the CIR at times, the percentage bandwidth measure could exceed 100%. In such cases, the percentage bandwidth measure is to be ignored.

In_errors Indicates the rate of inbound packets that contained errors preventing them from being delivered to a higher-layer protocol Packets/Sec Ideally, this value should be 0.
Out_errors Indicates the rate at which outbound packets could not be delivered as they contained errors Packets/Sec Ideally, this value should be 0.
In_discards Indicates the rate at which inbound packets were discarded, though such packets did not contain any errors that could prevent them from being delivered to a higher-layer protocol Packets/Sec One possible reason for discarding such a packet could be to free up buffer space.
Out_discards Indicates the rate at which outbound packets were discarded, though such packets did not contian any errors that could prevent them from being delivered to a higher-layer protocol Packets/Sec One possible reason for discarding such a packet could be to free up buffer space.
In_N_unicast Indicates the rate at which packets which were addressed as multicast or broadcast were received by this layer Packets/Sec  
Out_N_unicast Indicates the rate at which packets which were addressed as multicast or broadcast were sent by this layer Packets/Sec  
In_unicast Indicates the rate at which packets which were not addressed as multicast or broadcast were received by this layer Packets/Sec  
Out_unicast Indicates the rate at which packets which were not addressed as multicast or broadcast were sent by this layer Packets/Sec  
Unknown_protocols Indicates the rate at which unknown protocols were received Packets/Sec For packet-oriented interfaces, this measure will report the number of packets received via the interface which were discarded because of an unknown or unsupported protocol. For character-oriented or fixed-length interfaces that support protocol multiplexing, this measure reports the number of transmission units received via the interface which were discarded because of an unknown or unsupported protocol. For any interface that does not support protocol multiplexing, this counter will always be 0.  
Queue_length Indicates the length of the output packet queue Number A consistent increase in the queue length could be indicative of a network bottleneck.