Introduction
The Geneos X Multicast plug-in monitors multicast traffic and displays statistics such as the data rate and message rate, for a list of user-defined multicast groups.
This plug-in differs from the X-MCast plug-in in that is actually subscribes for data from the multicast groups, rather than just listening to data already present on the network. This means the plug-in is slightly less efficient, but requires fewer privileges to run.
The Netprobe host must be able to subscribe to the required multicast group to run successfully.
Views
View
The X Multicast plug-in produces a single view, with one row per configured multicast session.
Headline Legend
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| totalDataRecvRate | Data receive rate for all monitored sessions. |
| totalMsgRecvRate | Message receive rate for all monitored sessions. |
Table Legend
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| name | The session name, as configured by the user. |
| port | The session port, as configured by the user. |
| dataRecvRate | Data received in Kb/s, averaged over the sample interval. |
| msgRecvRate | Datagram messages received per second, averaged over the sample interval. |
| tmSinceLastMsg | Number of seconds since the last message was received. |
| status |
The session status, either "listening", "inactive", or a descriptive error message. "inactive" status will be displayed on a multicast group that has not received any traffic since monitoring was started. |
Plug-in Configuration
Plug-in configuration is placed in the x-multicast configuration section.
X Multicast can currently support a maximum of 1024 sessions on UNIX, and 64 sessions on Windows.
var-recvInterfaces
Specifies a comma-separated list of network interface names to monitor multicast 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 (at least one) multicast sessions that this plug-in will monitor.
Mandatory: Yes
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 needs to be in a location on the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.