Topic: ifconfig 101

[Derek]

Hello,

Can anyone give me a quick rundown on what healthy ifconfig stats should look like? I've got this on my 6.0 Server-only box:

RX packets:3321708 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:127 frame:0
TX packets:4090952 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

I'm not clear on the difference between dropped packets and packet overruns. Can anybody set me straight?

Thanks.

[Nathan Fowler]

Found from Google:

If you see the 'dropped' (second) field being non-zero, your system just can't handle all packets coming in up from the device driver.

PCI bus master unable to get time for writing data out of
     internal FIFOs before incoming data overflows those FIFOs.
     (Underrun is unability to feed data into transmit-FIFOs
      fast enough for packet transmission.)


   All in all, if your system has many busmasters (TV frame-grabbber,
   busy IDE/SCSI controllers, many network cards), it might do well
   to force lower latency values for them all (at BIOS setup.)


   Some chips are able to buffer things better than others, and
   tolerate longer latencies, or even are able to halt the incoming
   flow.

[Derek]

Thanks Nathan.