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
This is about two different layers:
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.