Bits/sec and bytes/sec

[nilsvandermark]

hi cacti users.


I wonder. Does weathermap support bytes/sec?
and if not, how can i express an accurate representation of bytes/sec maximum bandwith in a link?
I tried guessing, if a gigabyte interface maximum bandwith is 100/1000, then i should multiply it by 8. making the maximum bandwith 8G bits/sec?
And if it's and redundant connection, it would make it max 16G bits/sec

[Howie]

It depends what you mean by 'support'.

Internally weathermap assumes everything is in bits/sec. Since it normally calculates the relative usage between the measured value and the maximum, it doesn't really matter what the units are, as long as they are the same. You only have to worry about it if you want to label the link with a traffic value instead of a percentage.

SNMP typically uses octet counters, so by default weathermap multiplies the value read from the target by 8 to get bits/sec, if it's an rrd file. This works with Cacti, mrtg and many others.

Are you sure you have a gigabyte interface? That's a very unusual size, outside of fibrechannel storage. But anyway, what you care about is what is stored in the rrd file that you use as a target with weathermap. Is that in bits/sec or bytes/sec? A good clue is if you had to use a special template in Cacti to add the graph - if you just used the default 'Network Interface', then you don't need to add any special treatment.

Also, if you have a redundant connection (i.e. failover, not load-sharing), then you still have an 8G max, not 16G.