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X Multicast Plugin
Introduction
The Geneos X Multicast plugin monitors multicast traffic and displays statistics such as the data rate and message rate, for a list of user-defined multicast groups.
This plugin differs from the X-MCast plugin 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 plugin 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 plugin 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. |
Plugin Configuration
Plugin 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 plugin 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.