[Xorp-hackers] Counter application

Kristian Larsson kristian@juniks.net
Sat, 6 Aug 2005 19:28:22 +0200


Hi!

I've written a small program which does "interface counting".
It's meant to be integrated with XORP in the future, first it needs to mature
a bit ;)

It's split up into two parts, a daemon and client part. The daemon polls the
interfaces at a regular interval so to overcome the 32 bit counter problem.
GRUC (as the program is called - the GRand Unified Counter) uses 64 bit
counters (though not as of yet).
The two programs communicate via TCP much like the rtrmgr and xorpsh and this
would integrate smoothly with the xorp architecture and running on separate
machines.
The general idea is for it to, in the future, be a general counter with which
you could count just about anything - like hits in an ACL or similar.
Perhaps that's not efficient and we'll just keep it as an interface counter.
I thought there was a need to have a program like this somewhat integrated
with xorp, so that one can easily monitor network traffic from the xorpsh.

The look and feel is inspired from Extreme Networks ExtremeWare 'show port
statistics' command.

The program is in it's very early alpha stage and lacks a _LOT_ of
functionality. I write mostly to inform and to receive feedback and ideas of
what more could be implemented.

The program can be found at http://skalman.juniks.net/xorp/gruc-0.1.1.tar.gz
Please comment/complain to me at kristian@juniks.net


I would also like to say that it's with delight I read the CVS commit, as
they are rather frequent. The policy part is taking place and I have done
some testing and it seems quite good.
Also the Windows port seems to be progressing, Bruce is doing quite a lot of
work there. Good work although I am somewhat pussled over the need of a
windows port, does anyone actually need BGP on Windows?
Anyway, keep up the good work.

Regards,
Kristian