Re: traffic statistics by network connection

[Thomas Haller <thaller redhat com>]

On Wed, 2021-07-21 at 10:49 -0400, David H Durgee wrote:
> Thomas Haller wrote:
>  
> > On Tue, 2021-07-20 at 16:26 -0400, David H Durgee via
> > networkmanager-
> > list wrote:
> >  
> > > How can I get traffic statistics by network connection?  Is there
> > > a
> > > way 
> > > to retrieve this using nmcli?  Is there another tool that will do
> > > so?
> > >
> > > I have looked around and the tools I see work at the interface
> > > level,
> > > not at the connection level.
> > >
> > > I am using nmcli 1.22.18 as distributed with linux mint 20.1 x64
> > > here.
> > Ui,
> >
> > a "connection" is a profile, that is a bunch of settings for
> > configuring a network interface. Basically, see the lower-case keys
> > in
> > `nmcli connection show "$PROFILE". A profile has no traffic
> > statstics,
> > nor would it make sense.
> >
> > Well, that's not entirely correct and I guess it might make some
> > sense
> > to collect statistics associated with a profile. NM associates
> > additional information to prfiles with "connection.timestamp" and
> > "wifi.seen-bssids" properties and there are also the lease files
> > under
> > /var/lib/NetworkManager. But these are exceptions, usually a
> > profile is
> > just the settings that the user configured. In particular traffic
> > statistics are not tracked or associated with connection profiles
> > in
> > NetworkManager (yet).
> >
> >
> >
> > On D-Bus,
> >
> >   $ busctl -j call org.freedesktop.NetworkManager /org/freedesktop
> > org.freedesktop.DBus.ObjectManager GetManagedObjects
> >
> > you see the "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Statistics"
> > interface (which is per-interface). That exposes the RX/TX bytes.
> > That
> > is basically the same as kernel reports via netlink API. However,
> > the
> > values are stale unless you RefreshRateMs to a positive value
> > (which
> > causes NM to periodically poll the statistics from kernel).
> >
> >
> > There is no further magic with
> > "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Statistics". You could just
> > as
> > well read the information via netlink.
> >
> > These statistics are ad-hoc, and will be lost after reboot (or when
> > the
> > interface dispears). I guess you could build an interesting tool
> > for
> > that. I am not aware that one exists. However, the API was added by
> > Ubuntu developers, and presumably the do have a use for it and a
> > tool. 
> >
> >
> > best,
> > Thomas
>  
>  My reason for asking about this was as a means of confirming proper
> operation of a strongswan VPN.  When activated this VPN does not
> create
> a tun interface as the VPN I was previously using did.  I had hoped
> to
> find some way to confirm that the traffic is indeed being routed via
> the VPN as opposed to going directly over the WiFi connection even
> when
> the VPN is active.

I see.

>  
>  Perhaps I need to take another approach.  How difficult would it be
> for me to modify the connection to add a tun interface?  I see no way
> to specify this in the GUI, but inspecting the lapsed VPN connection
> shows a "dev=tun" statement in the VPN section of its nmconnection
> file.  Would manually adding such a statement to the strongswan VPN
> nmconnection file be sufficient?  Are other additional statements
> required that are not present by default?

I am not familiar with strongswan VPN. In general, it's the
responsibility of the VPN plugin to create the interface (if at all). 

For IPSec VPN (like libreswan, strongswan), the tunnel can also be
configured without having an actual interface. They can use XFRM
instead. So if strongswan does not create an interface, then that might
be still correct. And possibly there is a configuration in strongswan
to switch between the two modes. IDK.


best,
Thomas