Clarification of traffic measurement units

[shodg001]

Hello,

I am a bit confused and could use a little clarification on what units of measurement are used to measure port traffic. I have a Linux server that eth0 is being measured. The Service State perf data is eth0_txbyt=1344.00B and eth0_rxbyt=993.00B. On the host it shows the Service Status info as NET USAGE OK eth0:2.28KB. Am I assuming this is Bytes and Kilobytes and is it per second? I though traffic was measured using bits such as Mbps/Kbps/Bps and such.

I then have a look at a switch port that is being monitored via snmp. The Status Information is Traffic OK - Avg. In = 84.8 KB/s, Avg. Out = 171.9 KB/s. Is this then Kilobytes per second? Is that normal for traffic measuring? When we talk about a port we refer to it in terms of 10/100/1000 Megabits per second or 1 Gigabit per second.

Thanks for any clarification!

Regards,

Shawn

[sreinhardt]

Per the snmp standard and most implementations, yes it is bytes despite standard networking being counted in bits, as snmp and mrtg state the network speed counter should be in octets of data received(divided by 8 from bits, internal to the snmp daemon). This certainly could be manually altered to be bits, or GB\MB\KB via mrtg config alterations or external scripts. I suppose I should ask, since you are using core not XI, what are you using for collection of these metrics.

[shodg001]

Sorry for the late response on this. I am using check_iftraffic64:
http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Pl ... 64/details

[tmcdonald]

Looking at the usage of that script, it does appear you can make it output in bits:

Code: Select all

    -u, --units STRING
        g=gigabits/s,m=megabits/s,k=kilobits/s,b=bits/s. Required if -b, -I, -M,

I have not tested this though, just looked at the code.