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adamsjm523
Contributor
Contributor

esxcli network stats & dropped rx counters

Hello,

I am troubleshooting some network issues within our ESXi environment and found some conflicting information. If I run "esxcli network port stats get -p 33554440" the output shows 1.8 million dropped rx packets. If I run "esxcli network nic stats get -n vmnic0" it shows 0 dropped rx packets. Which counters should I believe? Do I really have 1.8 million dropped packets on my vmnic0 interface?

net-stats -l

PortNum          Type SubType SwitchName       MACAddress         ClientName

33554434            4       0 DvsPortset-0     e4:43:4b:3f:0e:c1  vmnic1

33554436            4       0 DvsPortset-0     e4:43:4b:3f:0e:c2  vmnic2

33554438            4       0 DvsPortset-0     e4:43:4b:3f:0e:c3  vmnic3

33554440            4       0 DvsPortset-0     e4:43:4b:3f:0e:c0  vmnic0

esxcli network port stats get -p 33554440

Packet statistics for port 33554440

   Packets received: 87544626

   Packets sent: 8429346

   Bytes received: 129602747701

   Bytes sent: 9463664346

   Broadcast packets received: 6493871

   Broadcast packets sent: 156345

   Multicast packets received: 3881601

   Multicast packets sent: 124981

   Unicast packets received: 77169154

   Unicast packets sent: 8148020

   Receive packets dropped: 1805740

   Transmit packets dropped: 0

esxcli network nic stats get -n vmnic0

NIC statistics for vmnic0

   Packets received: 394969676

   Packets sent: 60301120

   Bytes received: 133138954305

   Bytes sent: 27992022000

   Receive packets dropped: 0

   Transmit packets dropped: 0

   Multicast packets received: 13091748

   Broadcast packets received: 24361915

   Multicast packets sent: 412667

   Broadcast packets sent: 221598

   Total receive errors: 0

   Receive length errors: 0

   Receive over errors: 0

   Receive CRC errors: 0

   Receive frame errors: 0

   Receive FIFO errors: 0

   Receive missed errors: 0

   Total transmit errors: 0

   Transmit aborted errors: 0

   Transmit carrier errors: 0

   Transmit FIFO errors: 0

   Transmit heartbeat errors: 0

   Transmit window errors: 0

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1 Reply
DavoudTeimouri
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

This is about two different layers:

  1. Physical Layer - VMNIC
  2. Hypervisor layer - Port

if you want to know that there is any physical issue which cause of network issue, use NIC statistics. Physical layer has no sense about some packets.

But port is about kernel layer and kernel will drop any irrelevant packet.

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Davoud Teimouri - https://www.teimouri.net - Twitter: @davoud_teimouri Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teimouri.net/
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