X Broadcast Plugin - Technical Reference

Introduction

The Geneos X Broadcast plugin monitors (UDP) broadcast traffic and displays statistics such as the data rate and packet rate, for a list of user-defined services.

The Netprobe host must be able to "listen" for the required broadcast traffic (i.e. it should be on the same network segment as the broadcast source).

Views

View

The X Broadcast plugin produces a single view, with one row per configured broadcast service.

Table Legend

Name	Description
name	The service name, as configured by the user.
port	The service port, as configured by the user.
dataRecvRate	Data received in Kb/s, averaged over the sample interval.
pktRecvRate	Packets received per second, averaged over the sample interval.
tmSinceLastPkt	Number of seconds since the last packet was received.
srcHost	The IP address of the host which sent the last packet.

Plugin Configuration

The X Broadcast plugin listens to all broadcast data, matching the destination ports with those configured by the user.

Plugin configuration is placed in the x-broadcast configuration section.

var-recvInterfaces

Specifies a comma-separated list of network interface names to monitor broadcast data on.

On UNIX machines, interface names can be found using the command "ifconfig -a". Example names are "eth0" or "ce0".

On Windows machines, interface names can be listed by running Netprobe using the "-ifconfig" command-line option. A Windows interface name will look similar to the following:

\Device\NPF_{BDFE3EAC-0275-440A-923C-C9C4CE3B37F2}

Mandatory: Yes

sessions

Specifies the list of broadcast sessions that this plugin will monitor.

Mandatory: Yes

sessions > session > var-name

The name of the broadcast session - this is the name which will be displayed in the view (as the row name). Session names should be unique within each plugin instance.

Mandatory: Yes

sessions > session > var-port

The port of the broadcast session - broadcast packets received on this port will be added to the monitoring statistics for this session.

Mandatory: Yes

Permissions

The plugin needs to open network devices, so you should run the Netprobe using root or administrator permission on Unix and Windows, respectively.

On Linux kernel versions 2.6.24 and higher, an alternative to running the Netprobe as root is by setting the CAP_NET_RAW and CAP_NET_ADMIN Linux capabilities on the Netprobe binary using the following command:

setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip <netprobe binary>

When running the Netprobe with set capabilities, the lib64 folder in the Netprobe directory should be in the ld.so trusted paths. Otherwise, the runtime libraries will not load properly. For guidance, see Run Netprobe under elevated privileges in Linux in Quickstart: Linux and other platforms.

Third Party Libraries

Windows: The Winpcap packet capture library (http://www.winpcap.org/install/default.htm) needs to be installed on the host. Version 4.0.2 is required for Windows Vista/Server 2003 support.

Unix: The shared library libpcap.so (version 1.0.0 or later is recommended) needs to be in the netprobe lib64 directory.

Note: As the netprobe needs to be run as root the LD_LIBRARY_PATH is ignored for security reasons.