Interface statistics

Overview

This document is a guide to Linux network interface statistics.

There are three main sources of interface statistics in Linux:

  • standard interface statistics based on struct rtnl_link_stats64;
  • protocol-specific statistics; and
  • driver-defined statistics available via ethtool.

Standard interface statistics

There are multiple interfaces to reach the standard statistics. Most commonly used is the ip command from iproute2:

$ ip -s -s link show dev ens4u1u1
6: ens4u1u1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
  link/ether 48:2a:e3:4c:b1:d1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
  RX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped overrun mcast
  74327665117 69016965 0       0       0       0
  RX errors: length   crc     frame   fifo    missed
             0        0       0       0       0
  TX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped carrier collsns
  21405556176 44608960 0       0       0       0
  TX errors: aborted  fifo   window heartbeat transns
             0        0       0       0       128
  altname enp58s0u1u1

Note that -s has been specified twice to see all members of struct rtnl_link_stats64. If -s is specified once the detailed errors won’t be shown.

ip supports JSON formatting via the -j option.

Protocol-specific statistics

Some of the interfaces used for configuring devices are also able to report related statistics. For example ethtool interface used to configure pause frames can report corresponding hardware counters:

$ ethtool --include-statistics -a eth0
Pause parameters for eth0:
Autonegotiate:        on
RX:                   on
TX:                   on
Statistics:
  tx_pause_frames: 1
  rx_pause_frames: 1

Driver-defined statistics

Driver-defined ethtool statistics can be dumped using ethtool -S $ifc, e.g.:

$ ethtool -S ens4u1u1
NIC statistics:
   tx_single_collisions: 0
   tx_multi_collisions: 0

uAPIs

procfs

The historical /proc/net/dev text interface gives access to the list of interfaces as well as their statistics.

Note that even though this interface is using struct rtnl_link_stats64 internally it combines some of the fields.

sysfs

Each device directory in sysfs contains a statistics directory (e.g. /sys/class/net/lo/statistics/) with files corresponding to members of struct rtnl_link_stats64.

This simple interface is convenient especially in constrained/embedded environments without access to tools. However, it’s inefficient when reading multiple stats as it internally performs a full dump of struct rtnl_link_stats64 and reports only the stat corresponding to the accessed file.

Sysfs files are documented in Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-net-statistics.

ethtool

Ethtool IOCTL interface allows drivers to report implementation specific statistics. Historically it has also been used to report statistics for which other APIs did not exist, like per-device-queue statistics, or standard-based statistics (e.g. RFC 2863).

Statistics and their string identifiers are retrieved separately. Identifiers via ETHTOOL_GSTRINGS with string_set set to ETH_SS_STATS, and values via ETHTOOL_GSTATS. User space should use ETHTOOL_GDRVINFO to retrieve the number of statistics (.n_stats).

debugfs

Some drivers expose extra statistics via debugfs.

Notes for driver authors

Drivers should report all statistics which have a matching member in struct rtnl_link_stats64 exclusively via .ndo_get_stats64. Reporting such standard stats via ethtool or debugfs will not be accepted.

Drivers must ensure best possible compliance with struct rtnl_link_stats64. Please note for example that detailed error statistics must be added into the general rx_error / tx_error counters.

The .ndo_get_stats64 callback can not sleep because of accesses via /proc/net/dev. If driver may sleep when retrieving the statistics from the device it should do so periodically asynchronously and only return a recent copy from .ndo_get_stats64. Ethtool interrupt coalescing interface allows setting the frequency of refreshing statistics, if needed.

Retrieving ethtool statistics is a multi-syscall process, drivers are advised to keep the number of statistics constant to avoid race conditions with user space trying to read them.

Statistics must persist across routine operations like bringing the interface down and up.

Kernel-internal data structures

The following structures are internal to the kernel, their members are translated to netlink attributes when dumped. Drivers must not overwrite the statistics they don’t report with 0.