Re: RFC: NetworkManager Device Statistics

[Tony Espy <espy canonical com>]

On 05/25/2016 12:10 PM, Thomas Haller wrote:
> On Tue, 2016-05-24 at 12:51 -0400, Tony Espy wrote:
> > We have a new requirement to add a data activity indicator to Ubuntu
> > Touch for certification in certain markets.
> >
> > We've had some internal debate about whether or not we should extend
> > NetworkManager to provide this information to the rest of the system
> > vs.
> > adding logic directly to our touch-specific network indicator.
>
> Hi Tony,
>
>
> IMO it would be interested in having this in NetworkManager, and I
> think we would be willing to help with implementation.

That's great news!

I've CC'ed Alfonso Sanchez-Beato, who's the guy on our team who's been 
working on the DBus interface.

He's on the mailing list, but only receives it in digest form currently.

> > The current prototype is based on a similar facility in Connman, and
> > involves RTM_GETLINK polling to retrieve device-specific Rx and Tx
> > statistics.
>
> Do you have a prototype available somewhere?

https://git.launchpad.net/~morphis/+git/dev-tools/tree/rtnl-monitor.c

> > Connman's API can be seen here:
> >
> > https://git.kernel.org/cgit/network/connman/connman.git/tree/doc/coun
> > ter-api.txt
> > https://git.kernel.org/cgit/network/connman/connman.git/tree/doc/mana
> > ger-api.txt#n90
> >
> > Our proposed implementation involves extending
> > NMPlatform/NMLinuxPlatform and adding some new properties to the
> > NetworkManager.Device interface:
> >
> > * TxBytes, TxPackets, [calculated TxRate (byte/s)] and Rx equivalents
> > * EnableStatProps : boolean property to enable/disable device
> > statistics
> > * StatPropsRefreshRateMs : refresh rate for Tx/Rx properties in
> > milliseconds
> >
> > An alternative to extending the Device interface would be adding a
> > dedicated Device.Statistics interface; and perhaps a Device
> > interface
> > method ( vs. the EnableStatProps property ) to control
> > enabling/disabling collection of statistics on a per-device basis.
> >
> > The idea behind EnableStatProps is to avoid overloading the system
> > with
> > PropertiesChanged signals. The Tx/Rx properties will not refresh if
> > EnableStatProps is false, and will refresh, sending
> > PropertiesChanged
> > signals with the rate specified in StatPropsRefreshRateMs, when true.
> > In our case, we'd explicitly disable statistics when the screen on a
> > device is turned off.
>
>
> Maybe EnableStatProps could be dropped, and is implicit by
> setting StatPropsRefreshRateMs to zero.

I'll let you guys hash this out with Alfonso.

Thanks!
/tony