Re: RFC: per-socket statistics on received/dropped packets

On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Mark Mielke wrote:

On Mon, Jun 10, 2002 at 08:24:44AM -0400, jamal wrote:

quoted

I think i would agree with Dave for it to be an external patch. You
really only need this during debugging. I had a similar patch when
debugging NAPI about a year ago. I didnt find it that useful after
a while because i could deduce the losses from SNMP/netstat output.

In your case you found that you could solve it once by debugging the
application.

This doesn't mean that other applications would not be better at
determining the code path to use at execution time.

Just because eth1 is behaving perfectly (i.e. low overall dropped UDP
packets, or low TCP/IP retransmission) does not mean that a specific
socket currently on eth1 heading to China should assume that it can
take the 'average' observation as adequate for observing the specific
socket.

There *are* applications that would benefit from making this decision
at run time on a socket-by-socket basis. It is not a common requirement
for most desktop users, but it remains a valid requirement.

I am confused as to which application needs this, do you have one in mind?
AFAIK, UDP/RTP type apps already know how to determine packet loss
on a per flow basis.

Providing it as a patch, can have the effect that it becomes more trouble
than it is worth to grant other people access to the feature, especially
from a corporate environment that has signed off on being able to release
patches made to Linux back to the Linux source tree.

You may be confusing technical merit to mean the same thing as corporate
donation. In Linux its the later that counts.

Seems somewhat of a loss...

Your mileage may vary. Consider this - you have the opp to at least
make the patch available. Imagine trying to convince windriver.

cheers,
jamal

mark

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