Re: ifconfig v2

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> One thing I've long wished for is network interface status from NetBSD akin $

Perhaps.  It would mean deciding what sort of timescale to do the
averaging over - do you happen to know what Cisco uses for that?

> I note also that the "collisions" counter reported by netstat(1) is of margi$

This is true.  But I don't think it would be a good idea to drop it for
interfaces not capable of half-duplex operation; (a) I'm not sure there
are enough such to matter and (b) I think a consistent output format is
more important than skipping a value on occasions when it does happen
to be meaningless.  (There are also pseudo-interfaces which overload
the collisions value for other kinds of mild error; sl and tun are the
first two I noticed in a quick grep.)

> Whether these sorts of reports go in netstat or ifconfig is a matter for deb$

I agree.

Personally, I don't think the traffic-rate stuff belongs in the kernel.
I'd prefer to see that implemented in netstat by sampling stats twice
with a measured delay and doing the arithmetic there.  In aid of doing
this with very short delays, I'd say it would be good to make network
stats come back from the kernel with a timestamp attached.  "Mechanism,
not policy."

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