X Top Plugin - Technical Reference

Introduction

The Geneos X Top plugin monitors the top N producers of multicast traffic from a list of user-defined multicast groups, and displays statistics such as the data rate and packet rate.

The Netprobe host must be able to "listen" for the required multicast traffic (i.e. it should be on the same network segment as a host already subscribing to the required multicast data).

Views

View

The X Top plugin produces a single view, with one row per top multicast session.

x-top2

Headline Legend

Name	Description
totalSenders	Total number of senders found matching the configured sessions.
overallSendRate	Sum of data rates for all found senders (including those not in the view).
overallPacketRate	Sum of packet rates for all found senders (including those not in the view).
topSendersTraffic	Percentage of traffic generated by the top sender.

Table Legend

Name	Description
rank	The rank of the multicast sender - lower numbers indicate this source is sending more traffic.
hostname	The hostname of the multicast sender.
ipAddress	The IP address of the multicast sender.
dataRate	Data sent in Kb/s, averaged over the sample interval.
pktRate	Packets sent in Kb/s, averaged over the sample interval.
tmSinceLastPkt	Number of seconds since the last packet was received.
balance	Percentage of total traffic detected generated by this source.

Plugin Configuration

The X Top plugin listens to all multicast data received by a host, and matches the destination address and port with those configured by the user.

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

var-recvInterfaces

Specifies a comma-separated list of network interface names used to monitor multicast data.

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 (at least one) multicast sessions that this plugin will monitor.

Mandatory: Yes

sessions > session > var-name

The name of the multicast session. Session names should be unique within each plugin instance.

Mandatory: Yes

sessions > session > connection

Specifies the multicast address and port for the session - multicast packets received for this connection will be added to the monitoring statistics for this session.

Mandatory: Yes

var-showTop

This parameter specifies the number of top senders to display in the view, which must be a positive integer of at least 1. Top senders are determined by comparing the data rate values. The view may show less than the configured number, if there are less senders than this value.

Mandatory: No

Default: 10

var-resolveIPAddress

This setting takes a Boolean value, and specifies whether or not the IP address of a multicast sender will be resolved to a hostname.

Mandatory: No

Default: true

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.