Monitoring Solaris Ethernet Performance

Netstat -i

This option is used to diagnose the network problems when  the connectivity is there but  it is slow in response .

Values to look at:

    * Collisions (Collis)
    * Output packets (Opkts)
    * Input errors (Ierrs)
    * Input packets (Ipkts)

Network collision rate = Output collision counts / Output packets

Network-wide collision rate greater than 10 percent  will indicate

    *  Overloaded network,
    *  Poorly configured network,
    *  Hardware problems. 

Input Packet Error Rate = Ierrs / Ipkts.

If the input error rate is high (over 0.25 percent), the host is dropping packets. Hub/switch cables etc needs to be checked for potential problems. 

Name  Mtu  Net/Dest   Address    Ipkts     Ierrs Opkts     Oerrs Collis Queue
lo0   8232 loopback   localhost  43523390  0     43523390  0     0      0
hme0  1500 <hostname> <hostname> 561847305 886   483621617 0     0      0
qfe0  1500 <hostname> <hostname> 13480886  1     1521743   0     0      0

You can also use the following to determine the the ethernet interface link status,and speed on your interface. In the example below I am running these on hme0

ndd -set /dev/hme instance 0
ndd -get /dev/hme link_status
ndd -get /dev/hme link_mode
ndd -get /dev/hme link_speed

If you have only one ethernet interface, you can leave out the instance
command. Otherwise, you can specify the hme instance number there. The
results of the next three commands are either 1 or 0. In each case, the
value means:

link_status:  0=down 1=up

link_mode:   0=half duplex  1=full duplex

link_speed:  0=10Mbps  1=100Mbps

You can also use the following netstat command. Replace ce0 with your ethernet adapter

>netstat -k ce0 | egrep ‘link_speed|link_status|link_duplex’
lp_cap_asmpause 1 lp_cap_pause 0 link_T4 0 link_speed 1000
link_duplex 2 link_asmpause 0 link_pause 0 link_up 1 mac_mtu 1522

How to read this junk:
link_up – 0 down, 1 up


link_speed – speed in Mbit/s


link_duplex – 1 half duplex, 2 full duplex, 0 down