原文
Introduction
The first thing that usually comes to mind when a system administrator hears that there might be some network contention issues is to run netstat
. netstat
, the equivalent of using vmstat
or iostat
for your memory reports, is a quick and dirty way of getting an overview of how your network is configured. Unlike vmstat
or iostat
, the defaults usually do not give you as much information as you probably would like. You need to understand the correct usage of netstat
and how best to utilize it when monitoring your system.
netstat
is really not a monitoring tool in the sense of vmstat
and iostat
. You can use other tools more suitable (discussed later in the article) to help monitor your network subsystem. At the same time, you can’t really start to monitor unless you have a thorough understanding of the various components related to network performance. These components include your network adapters, your switches and routers, and how you are using virtualization on your host logical partitions. If you determine you are indeed having a network bottleneck, fixing the problem might actually lay outside of your immediate host machine. There is little you can do if the network switch is improperly configured on the other end. Of course, you might be able to point the network team in the right direction. You should also spend time gathering overall information about your network. How are you going to be able to understand how to troubleshoot your network devices unless you really understand your network? In this article, you’ll look at specific AIX network tracing tools, such as netpmon
, and how they can help you isolate your bottlenecks.
Finally, no matter which subsystem you are looking to tune, you must think of systems tuning must as an ongoing process. As stated before, the best time to start monitoring your systems is at the beginning, before you have any problems and users aren’t screaming. You must have a baseline of network performance so that you know what the system looks like when it is behaving normally. Finally, when making changes, be careful to make changes only one at a time so that you can really assess the impact of your change.
Network I/O overview
This section provides an overview of the network as it relates to AIX and covers the physical aspects of the network (device drives and adapters), the AIX networking stack, and how to make some changes to your adapter.
Understanding the network subsystem, as it relates to AIX, is not an easy undertaking. When examining the CPU and memory bottlenecks, there are far fewer areas that you need to examine from a hardware and software aspect. Disk I/O tuning is more complex, as there are many more issues that impact performance, particularly during the architectural and build-out of your systems. In this respect, tuning your network is probably most like tuning your disk I/O, which is actually not too surprising, as they both relate to I/O. Let’s start. Figure 1 illustrates the AIX Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) layers.
Figure 1. The AIX TCP/IP layers
You can clearly see there is more to network monitoring than running netstat
and looking for collisions. From the application layer through the media layer, there are areas that need to be configured, monitored, and tuned. At this point, you should notice some similarities between this illustration and the Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model (OSI Model). The OSI Model has seven layers (bottom to top):
- Physical
- Data-link
- Network
- Transport
- Session
- Presentation
- Application
Perhaps the most important concept to understand is that on the host machine each layer communicates with its corresponding layer on the remote machine. The actual application programs transmit data using either User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) transport layer protocols. They receive the data from whatever application you are using and divide them into packets. The packets themselves differ, depending on whether it is a UDP or TCP packet. Generally speaking, UDP is faster, while TCP is more secure. There are many tunable parameters to look at — you’ll get to these parameters during subsequent phases of the series. You might want to start to familiarize yourself with the no
command, which is the utility designed to make the majority of your network changes. From a hardware perspective, it is critical that you understand the components that need to be configured appropriately to optimize performance. Though you might work together with the network teams that manage your switches and routers, it is unlikely that you will be configuring them, unless you are a small shop or a one-person IT department. The most important component you will be working with is your network adapter. In 2007, most of your adapters will probably be some version that supports Gigabit Ethernet, such as a 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet card. There are several important concepts you will need to work with here.
Maximum Transfer Unit
Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) is defined as the largest packet that can be sent over a network. The size depends on the type of network. For example, 16-bit token ring has a default MTU size of 17914, while Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) has a default size of 4352. Ethernet has a default size of 1500 (9000 with jumbo frames enabled). Larger packets require less packet transfers, which result in higher bandwidth utilization on your system. An exception to this is if your application prefers smaller packets. If you are using a Gigabit Ethernet, you can use a jumbo frames option. To support the use of jumbo frames, it’s important to note that your switch must also be configured, accordingly.
To change to jumbo frames, use this fastpath: # smit devices
.
Then go to Communication>Ethernet>Adapter>Change/show characteristics of an Ethernet adapter. Try to change the transmit jumbo frames option from “No” to “Yes” (see Listing 1 below).
Listing 1. Characteristics of an Ethernet adapter screen
Change / show characteristics of an Ethernet adapter
Type or select values in entry fields.
Press Enter AFTER making all desired changes.
[TOP] [Entry Fields]
Ethernet Adapter ent1
Description Virtual I/O Ethernet >
Status Available
Location
Enable ALTERNATE ETHERNET address no +
ALTERNATE ETHERNET address [0x000000000000] +
Minimum Tiny Buffers [512] +#
Maximum Tiny Buffers [2048] +#
Minimum Small Buffers [512] +#
Maximum Small Buffers [2048] +#
Maximum Medium Buffers [128] +#
Maximum Medium Buffers [256] +#
Minimum Large Buffers [24] +#
[MORE...8]
F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel F4=List
F5=Reset F6=Command F7=Edit F8=Image
F9=Shell F10=Exit Enter=Do
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Where is the jumbo frames option? In this case, you cannot make the change. The reason for this is because you are only using the Virtual I/O Ethernet on this system — this topic is discussed in more detail later. Remember, you must understand the network on the host you are administering!
Let’s check this system (see Listing 2 below).
Listing 2. Checking the system
Change / show characteristics of an Ethernet adapter
Type or select values in entry fields.
Press Enter AFTER making all desired changes.
[Entry Fields]
Ethernet Adapter ent1
Description 10/100/1000 Base-TX P>
Status Available
Location 1j-08
RX descriptor queue size [1024] +#
TX descriptor queue size [1024] +#
Software transmit queue size [8192] +#
Transmit jumbo frames yes +
Enable hardware TX TCP resegmentation yes +
Enable hardware transmit and receive checksum yes +
Media speed Auto_Negotiation +
Enable ALTERNATE ETHERNET address no +
ALTERNATE ETHERNET address [0x000000000000] +
Apply change to DATABASE only no +
F1=Help F2=Refresh F3=Cancel F4=List
F5=Reset F6=Command F7=Edit F8=Image
F9=Shell F10=Exit Enter=Do
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You have now changed the field to support jumbo frames.
Media speed
Adapters communicate with other devices based on how your media speed is configured. Though there are other choices, you need to configure your card for either 100_full_duplex or auto-negotiation. With auto-negotiation, both adapters attempt to communicate using the highest possible speed. Though you might find in the documentation that it should be configured this way (IBM® even defaults it this way on the system), most senior AIX administrators I know prefer to set it to full duplex, to ensure that you are receiving the fastest possible adapter speed. If it doesn’t work properly, you should then work with the appropriate network teams to resolve the problems prior to deployment. I would prefer taking more time initially versus setting the adapter to a setting that might cause slower speeds as a result of poorly configured switches. The lsattr
command gives you the information that you need. The en prefix displays your driver parameters, while the ent prefix displays your hardware parameters. Let’s display your hardware parameters (see Listing 3 below).
Listing 3. Displaying the hardware parameters
testsys:/home/test>lsattr -El ent0
alt_addr 0x000000000000 Alternate Ethernet Address True
busintr 166 Bus interrupt level False
busmem 0xc8030000 Bus memory address False
chksum_offload yes Enable RX Checksum Offload True
intr_priority 3 Interrupt priority False
ipsec_offload no IPsec Offload True
large_send no Enable TCP Large Send Offload True
media_speed Auto_Negotiation Media Speed True
poll_link no Enable Link Polling True
poll_link_timer 500 Time interval for Link Polling True
rom_mem 0xc8000000 ROM memory address False
rx_hog 1000 RX Descriptors per RX Interrupt True
rxbuf_pool_sz 1024 Receive Buffer Pool Size True
rxdesc_que_sz 1024 RX Descriptor Queue Size True
slih_hog 10 Interrupt Events per Interrupt True
tx_preload 1520 TX Preload Value True
tx_que_sz 8192 Software TX Queue Size True
txdesc_que_sz 512 TX Descriptor Queue Size True
use_alt_addr no Enable Alternate Ethernet Address True
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In this case, your interface is set as auto-negotiate.
You should also check your firmware levels to make sure they are up-to-date. I’ve seen many network problems fixed when updating to the latest levels of firmware. The lscfg
command gives you the firmware information (see Listing 4 below).
Listing 4. Using the lscfg
command for firmware information
testsys:/home/test >lscfg -vp | grep -p ROM
10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter II:
Part Number.................09P5023
FRU Number..................09P5023
EC Level....................H10971A
Manufacture ID..............YL1021
Network Address.............0002556FC98B
ROM Level.(alterable).......SCU015
Product Specific.(Z0).......A5204207
Device Specific.(YL)........U0.1-P1-I1/E1
10/100/1000 Base-TX PCI-X Adapter:
Part Number.................00P3056
FRU Number..................00P3056
EC Level....................H11635A
Manufacture ID..............YL1021
Network Address.............00096B2E31BD
ROM Level.(alterable).......GOL002
Device Specific.(YL)........U0.1-P1/E2
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The history for the 10/100/1000 Base-TX PCI-X adapter:
- OLxxx — This is a table place holder for future firmware revisions.
- GOL021 — This level of firmware corrects the vendor device ID on EMC Class B adapters so that the adapter is recognized during AIX Network Installation Management (NIM). Checksum from the AIX
60;sum61;
command is 38603. - GOL012 — In OF, there is a very small possibility that the adapter can hang the system when the adapter (hardware) does not function properly during transmit. The change prevents the adapter from trying to send packets forever. After trying for a predetermined time, a timer is added to timeout.
- GOL002 — If the user selected 10/auto or 100/auto and did not ping the switch first, the updated firmware resolves the problem; the open firmware would not change the settings to auto/auto before passing it to AIX. If AIX sees a parameter as 10/auto or 100/auto, it does not understand how to deal with that, and the system stops during ioconfig with a code 607. The firmware now changes any combination of 10/auto, 100/auto, auto/full, or auto/half, which are invalid selections, to auto/auto.
- GOL001 — Original (GA) Open Firmware level.
A quick glance at the history shows that you are two levels down from where you should be. You need to look for some downtime to upgrade the firmware, particularly if you’ve been having some intermittent network problems.
Though the series focuses on tuning in subsequent parts, you might want to start to familiarize yourself with the memory management facility of network subsystems. What you need to know at this point is that it relates to data structures called mbufs. These are used to store kernel data for incoming and outbound traffic. The buffer sizes themselves can range from 32 to 16384 bytes. They are created by making allocation requests to the Virtual Memory Manager (VMM). In an SMP box, each memory pool is split evenly for every processor . The monitoring section below shows you how to view mbufs. An important concept to note is that processors cannot borrow from the memory pool outside of its own processor.
Two other concepts you should be familiar with are virtual Ethernet and shared Ethernet.
- Virtual Ethernet: Virtual Ethernet, supported on AIX 5.3 on POWER5™, allows for inter-partition- and IP-based communications between logical partitions on the same frame. This is done by the use of a virtual I/O switch. The Ethernet adapters themselves are created and configured using the HMC. If you recall, you tried to change an adapter earlier that was configured with virtual Ethernet.
- Shared Ethernet: Shared Ethernet is one of the features of Advanced POWER Virtualization. It allows for the use of Virtual I/O Servers (VIOs), where several host machines can actually share one physical network adapter. Typically, this is used in environments that do not require substantial network bandwidth.
While the scope of this series is not on virtualization, you should understand that if you are using virtualization, there might be other reasons for your bottleneck outside of what you are doing on your host machine. While virtualization is a wonderful thing, be careful not to share too many adapters from your VIO Server, or you might pay a large network I/O penalty. Using appropriate monitoring tools should inform you if you have a problem. Further, you might also want to familiarize yourself with concepts such as Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and Domain Name Server (DNS), which can also impact network performance and reliability in different ways.
Monitoring
This section provides an overview of general network monitoring commands and specific AIX tools available to you. Some of the tools allow you to quickly troubleshoot a performance problem and others capture data for historical trending and analysis.
Let’s get back to the old standby, netstat
, which displays overall network statistics. Probably one of the most common commands you type in is netstat -in
(see Listing 5 below).
Listing 5. Using netstat
with the -in
option
@lpar7ml162f_pub[/home/u0004773] > netstat -in
Name Mtu Network Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Coll
en1 1500 link#2 2a.21.70.0.90.6 21005666 0 175389 0 0
en1 1500 10.153 10.153.3.7 21005666 0 175389 0 0
en0 1500 link#3 2a.21.70.0.90.5 328241182 0 1189 0 0
en0 1500 172.29.128 172.29.137.205 328241182 0 1189 0 0
lo0 16896 link#1 62223 0 62234 0 0
lo0 16896 127 127.0.0.1 62223 0 62234 0 0
lo0 16896 ::1 62223 0 62234 0 0
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/home/u0004773] >
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Here is what it means:
- Name: Interface name.
- MTU: Interface Maximum Transfer Unit size.
- Network: The actual network address that the interface connects to.
- Address: Mac and IP address.
- Ipkts: The total amount of packets received by the interface.
- Ierrs: The amount of errors reported back from the interface.
- Opkts: The amount of packets transmitted from the interface.
- Oerrs: The amount of error packets transmitted from the interface.
- Coll: The amount of collisions on the adapter. If you are using Ethernet, you won’t see anything here.
Another handy netstat
flag is the -m
option. This flag allows you to view the Kernel malloc statistics; the mbuf memory requests, including the size of the buffers, the amount in use and the failures by CPU (see Listing 6 below).
Listing 6. netstat with -m
option
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/home/u0004773] > netstat -m
Kernel malloc statistics:
******* CPU 0 *******
By size inuse calls failed delayed free hiwat freed
32 194 5203 0 2 62 2620 0
64 484 3926 0 7 28 2620 0
128 309 14913 0 8 875 1310 0
256 392 14494 0 22 136 2620 0
512 2060 261283179 0 261 60 3275 0
1024 31 2714 0 8 25 1310 0
2048 587 1237 0 292 5 1965 0
4096 9 8367 0 2 2 655 0
8192 2 12 0 2 1 327 0
16384 224 354 0 29 2 163 0
32768 48 183 0 13 3 81 0
65536 84 142 0 42 0 81 0
131072 3 4 0 0 51 102 0
******* CPU 1 *******
By size inuse calls failed delayed free hiwat freed
32 17 96 0 0 111 2620 0
64 295 1214 0 5 25 2620 0
128 151 93806 0 5 713 1310 0
256 83 273 0 5 29 2620 0
512 1577 86936634 0 199 23 3275 0
1024 4 18 0 2 4 1310 0
2048 515 516 0 257 1 1965 0
4096 1 707 0 0 1 655 0
8192 1 1 0 1 4 327 0
16384 32 32 0 4 0 163 0
65536 34 34 0 17 0 81 0
131072 0 0 0 0 44 88 0
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If you are using an Ethernet, you can also use the entstat
command to display device-driver statistics. This provides a potpourri of information (see Listing 7 below).
Listing 7. Using the enstat
command to display device driver statistics
testsys:/home/test>entstat -d en1
-------------------------------------------------------------
ETHERNET STATISTICS (en1) :
Device Type: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter II (1410ff01)
Hardware Address: 00:02:55:6f:c9:9b
Elapsed Time: 5 days 12 hours 14 minutes 46 seconds
Transmit Statistics: Receive Statistics:
-------------------- -------------------
Packets: 803536 Packets: 2095253
Bytes: 511099654 Bytes: 1099945394
Interrupts: 520 Interrupts: 2074913
Transmit Errors: 0 Receive Errors: 0
Packets Dropped: 0 Packets Dropped: 0
Bad Packets: 0
Max Packets on S/W Transmit Queue: 38
S/W Transmit Queue Overflow: 0
Current S/W+H/W Transmit Queue Length: 1
Broadcast Packets: 535 Broadcast Packets: 997476
Multicast Packets: 2 Multicast Packets: 5477
No Carrier Sense: 0 CRC Errors: 0
DMA Underrun: 0 DMA Overrun: 0
Lost CTS Errors: 0 Alignment Errors: 0
Max Collision Errors: 0 No Resource Errors: 0
Late Collision Errors: 0 Receive Collision Errors: 0
Deferred: 0 Packet Too Short Errors: 0
SQE Test: 0 Packet Too Long Errors: 0
Timeout Errors: 0 Packets Discarded by Adapter: 0
Single Collision Count: 0 Receiver Start Count: 0
Multiple Collision Count: 0
Current HW Transmit Queue Length: 1
General Statistics:
-------------------
No mbuf Errors: 0
Adapter Reset Count: 0
Adapter Data Rate: 200
Driver Flags: Up Broadcast Running
Simplex AlternateAddress 64BitSupport
ChecksumOffload PrivateSegment DataRateSet
10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter II (1410ff01) Specific Statistics:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Link Status : up
Media Speed Selected: Auto negotiation
Media Speed Running: 100 Mbps Full Duplex
Receive Pool Buffer Size: 1024
No Receive Pool Buffer Errors: 0
Receive Buffer Too Small Errors: 0
Entries to transmit timeout routine: 0
Transmit IPsec packets: 0
Transmit IPsec packets dropped: 0
Receive IPsec packets: 0
Receive IPsec packets dropped: 0
Inbound IPsec SA offload count: 0
Transmit Large Send packets: 0
Transmit Large Send packets dropped: 0
Packets with Transmit collisions:
1 collisions: 0 6 collisions: 0 11 collisions: 0
2 collisions: 0 7 collisions: 0 12 collisions: 0
3 collisions: 0 8 collisions: 0 13 collisions: 0
4 collisions: 0 9 collisions: 0 14 collisions: 0
5 collisions: 0 10 collisions: 0 15 collisions: 0
testsys:/home/test>
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You won’t see many collisions, as you’ll probably be working in a switched environment. Look for transmit errors and make sure they are not increasing too fast. You need to learn to troubleshoot collision and error problems before you even begin to think about tuning. Alternatively, you can use netstat -v
, which provides similar information.
Let’s look at netpmon
. netpmon
provides information on CPU usage as it relates to the network, and it also includes data about network device driver I/O, Internet socket calls, and other various statistics. Similar to its other trace brethren, tprof
and filemon
, it starts a trace and runs in the background until you stop it with the trcstop
command. I like netpmon
, because it really gives you a detailed overview of network activity and also captures data for trending and analysis (though it is not as useful as nmon
for this purpose). Here you’ll use a trace buffer size of two million bytes (see Listing 8 below).
Listing 8. netpmom with -T
option
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] > netpmon -T 2000000 -o /tmp/net.out
Wed Sep 5 05:30:27 2007
System: AIX 5.3 Node: lpar7ml162f_pub Machine: 00C22F2F4C00
Run trcstop command to signal end of trace.
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Now you’ll stop it (see Listing 9 below).
Listing 9. Stopping netpmom
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] >
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] > trcstop
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] > [netpmon: Reporting started]
[netpmon: Reporting completed]
[ 4 traced cpus ]
[ 245.464 secs total preempt time ]
[netpmon: 164.813 secs in measured interval]
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] >
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Let’s look at the data. Here is just a small sampling of the output (see Listing 10 below).
Listing 10. Sample output
# more net.out
Process CPU Usage Statistics:
-----------------------------
Network
Process (top 20) PID CPU Time CPU % CPU %
----------------------------------------------------------
UNKNOWN 15920 151.2735 36.558 0.000
UNKNOWN 7794 104.8801 25.346 0.000
UNKNOWN 6876 73.8785 17.854 0.000
UNKNOWN 5402 50.6225 12.234 0.000
xmwlm 13934 15.0469 3.636 0.000
-ksh 5040 0.0371 0.009 0.000
getty 18688 0.0280 0.007 0.000
sshd: 28514 0.0224 0.005 0.000
syncd 10068 0.0212 0.005 0.000
gil 3870 0.0163 0.004 0.004
swapper 0 0.0135 0.003 0.000
spray 5400 0.0085 0.002 0.000
send-mail 18654 0.0084 0.002 0.000
rmcd 15026 0.0081 0.002 0.000
ping 5036 0.0068 0.002 0.000
ksh 26642 0.0062 0.002 0.000
trcstop 5404 0.0057 0.001 0.000
rpc.lockd 22032 0.0052 0.001 0.000
mail 6872 0.0039 0.001 0.000
IBM.ServiceRMd 28126 0.0032 0.001 0.000
----------------------------------------------------------
Total (all processes) 395.9176 95.681 0.004
Idle time 70.3216 16.995
========================================================================
First Level Interrupt Handler CPU Usage Statistics:
---------------------------------------------------
Network
FLIH CPU Time CPU % CPU %
----------------------------------------------------------
PPC decrementer 18.4640 4.462 0.000
queued interrupt 6.2882 1.520 0.000
external device 0.6343 0.153 0.000
data page fault 0.0220 0.005 0.000
----------------------------------------------------------
Total (all FLIHs) 25.4085 6.140 0.000
TCP Socket Call Statistics (by Process):
----------------------------------------
------ Read ----- ----- Write -----
Process (top 20) PID Calls/s Bytes/s Calls/s Bytes/s
------------------------------------------------------------------------
sshd: 28514 0.47 7754 0.65 40
sshd: 29596 0.04 596 0.05 3
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total (all processes) 0.51 8350 0.70 43
========================================================================
NFSv3 Client RPC Statistics (by Server):
----------------------------------------
Server Calls/s
----------------------------------
p650 0.03
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total (all servers) 0.03
========================================================================
PROCESS: ping PID: 5036
reads: 12
read sizes (bytes): avg 192.0 min 192 max 192 sdev 0.0
read times (msec): avg 7.927 min 7.136 max 12.806 sdev 1.496
writes: 12
write sizes (bytes): avg 64.0 min 64 max 64 sdev 0.0
write times (msec): avg 0.052 min 0.039 max 0.063 sdev 0.007
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As you can see, there is little overall network I/O activity going on during this time. The top section is most important, as it really helps you get an understanding of what processes are eating up network I/O time.
lsattr
(used earlier to view the hardware parameters) is another command you will be using frequently to display statistics on your interfaces. The attributes that you see here are configured using either the chdev
or no
commands. Let’s display your driver parameters (see Listing 11 below).
Listing 11. Displaying the driver parameters using lsattr
testsys:/home/testsys >lsattr -El en0
alias4 IPv4 Alias including Subnet Mask True
alias6 IPv6 Alias including Prefix Length True
arp on Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) True
authority Authorized Users True
broadcast Broadcast Address True
mtu 1500 Maximum IP Packet Size for This Device True
netaddr Internet Address True
netaddr6 IPv6 Internet Address True
netmask Subnet Mask True
prefixlen Prefix Length for IPv6 Internet Address True
remmtu 576 Maximum IP Packet Size for REMOTE Networks True
rfc1323 Enable/Disable TCP RFC 1323 Window Scaling True
security none Security Level True
state detach Current Interface Status True
tcp_mssdflt Set TCP Maximum Segment Size True
tcp_nodelay Enable/Disable TCP_NODELAY Option True
tcp_recvspace Set Socket Buffer Space for Receiving True
tcp_sendspace Set Socket Buffer Space for Sending True
testsys:/home/testsys>
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I also like to use the spray
command to troubleshoot possible problems. The spray
command sends a one-way stream of packets to the remote host machines from your host. It shows you the amount of packets as well as the packet transfer rate (see Listing 12 below).
Listing 12. spray
command
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] > /usr/etc/spray lpar8test -c 2000 -l 1400 -d 1
sending 2000 packets of length 1402 to
lpar8test ...
34 packets (1.700%) dropped by lpar8test
23667 packets/second, 33181234 bytes/second
root@lpar7ml162f_pub[/etc] >
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In this example, 2000 packets were sent to the lpar8test host, with a delay of one micro-second. Each packet was sent 1400 bytes. Before using spray
, make sure that sprayd
is not commented out of inetd
(defaulted in AIX), and don’t forget to refresh inetd
. If you are seeing a substantial amount of dropped packets, that is obviously not good.
Finally, let’s look at nmon
in Listing 13 below.
Listing 13. nmon
?nmon????????p=Partitions???????Host=lpar7ml162f_pubRefresh=2 secs???05:43.15?????????
? Network ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?I/F Name Recv=KB/s Trans=KB/s packin packout insize outsize Peak->Recv Trans ?
? en1 2.1 0.0 46.3 0.0 46.0 0.0 2.1 0.0 ?
? en0 43.8 0.3 575.2 0.5 77.9 674.0 43.8 0.6 ?
? lo0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 ?
? Total 0.0 0.0 in Mbytes/second ?
?I/F Name MTU ierror oerror collision Mbits/s Description ?
? en1 1500 0 0 0 2047 Standard Ethernet Network Interface ?
? en0 1500 0 0 0 2047 Standard Ethernet Network Interface ?
? lo0 16896 0 0 0 0 Loopback Network Interface
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With nmon
(type in n after startup), you have a quick snapshot of everything going on in your network, including adapter details, MTU, error counters and collisions, and megabit rating.
Further, you also have the ability to capture data with nmon
. Using the nmon analyzer, you can print out pretty graphical reports directly from Microsoft® Excel spreadsheets.
Summary
This article covered the relative importance of the network I/O subsystem, and defined the AIX network I/O layers and how it relates to the OSI Model. You learned some best practices for network configuration, changed your Ethernet settings to support jumbo frame, and viewed interface hardware and driver data. You even examined the monitoring tools available to you and captured data using netpmon
and nmon
. In the next part of the series, you’ll tune NFS, find out more about monitoring utilities, such as nfsstat
and nmon
, and discover how to tune with nfso
.