Linux 4.11 kernel extends packet sampling support
Linux 4.11 on Linux Kernel Newbies describes the features added in the April 30, 2017 release. Of particular interest is the new netlink sampling channel:Introduce psample, a general way for kernel modules to sample packets, without being tied to any specific subsystem. This netlink channel can be used by tc, iptables, etc. and allow to standardize packet sampling in the kernel commitThe psample netlink channel delivers sampled packet headers along with associated metadata from the Linux kernel to user space. The psample fields map directly into sFlow Version 5 sampled_header export structures:
| netlink psample | sFlow | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PSAMPLE_ATTR_IIFINDEX | input | Interface packet was received on. |
| PSAMPLE_ATTR_OIFINDEX | output | Interface packet was sent on. |
| PSAMPLE_ATTR_SAMPLE_GROUP | data source | The location within network device that generated packet sample. |
| PSAMPLE_ATTR_GROUP_SEQ | drops | Number of times that the sFlow agent detected that a packet marked to be sampled was dropped due to lack of resources. Agent calculates drops by tracking discontinuities in PSAMPLE_ATTR_GROUP_SEQ |
| PSAMPLE_ATTR_SAMPLE_RATE | sampling_rate | The Sampling Rate specifies the ratio of packets observed at the Data Source to the samples generated. For example a sampling rate of 100 specifies that, on Continue reading |

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