Adapter Proprietary Performance Counters

Proprietary Performance Counters are used to provide information on Operating System, application, service or the drivers' performance. Counters can be used for different system debugging purposes, help to determine system bottlenecks and fine-tune system and application performance. The Operating System, network, and devices provide counter data that the application can consume to provide users with a graphical view of the system’s performance quality.

Warning

All adapter cards related counters are cleared/reset only upon the card’s restart or machine power-cycle.

WinOF counters hold the standard Windows CounterSet API that includes:

Network Interface
RDMA activity
SMB Direct Connection

Proprietary Mellanox Adapter Traffic Counters

Proprietary Mellanox adapter traffic counter set consists of global traffic statistics which gather information from ConnectX®-3 and ConnectX®-3 Pro network adapters, and includes traffic statistics, and various types of error and indications from both the Physical Function and Virtual Function.

Mellanox Adapter Traffic Counters	Description
Bytes IN
Bytes Received	Shows the number of bytes received by the adapter. The counted bytes include framing characters.
Bytes Received/Sec	Shows the rate at which bytes are received by the adapter. The counted bytes include framing characters.
Packets Received	Shows the number of packets received by ConnectX-3 and ConnectX-3Pro network interface.
Packets Received/Sec	Shows the rate at which packets are received by ConnectX-3 and ConnectX-3Pro network interface.
Bytes/Packets OUT
Bytes Sent	Shows the number of bytes sent by the adapter. The counted bytes include framing characters.
Bytes Sent/Sec	Shows the rate at which bytes are sent by the adapter. The counted bytes include framing characters.
Packets Sent	Shows the number of packets sent by ConnectX-3 and ConnectX-3Pro network interface.
Packets Sent/Sec	Shows the rate at which packets are sent by ConnectX-3 and ConnectX-3Pro network interface.
Bytes’ TOTAL
Bytes Total	Shows the total of bytes handled by the adapter. The counted bytes include framing characters.
Bytes Total/Sec	Shows the total rate of bytes that are sent and received by the adapter. The counted bytes include framing characters.
Packets Total	Shows the total of packets handled by ConnectX-3 and ConnectX-3Pro network interface.
Packets Total/Sec	Shows the rate at which packets are sent and received by ConnectX-3 and ConnectX-3Pro network interface.
Control Packets	The total number of successfully received control frames
ERRORS, DROP, AND MISC. INDICATIONS
Packets Outbound Errors^a	Shows the number of outbound packets that could not be transmitted because of errors found in the physical layer.
Packets Outbound Discarded^a	Shows the number of outbound packets to be discarded in the physical layer, even though no errors had been detected to prevent transmission. One possible reason for discarding packets could be to free up some buffer space.
Packets Received Errors^a	The number of received packets dropped due to various errors on the physical port, such as MTU, jabber, frame too long, frame too short, CRC etc. Note: This counter includes the counting from the "Packets Received with Frame Length Error", "Packets Received with Symbol Error" & "Packets Received with Bad CRC Error" counters.
Packets Received with Frame Length Error	The number of received packets dropped due to length errors on a physical port. Possible causes: Other party on the second end of the link is transmitting packets with wrong length. This counter is summed in OID_GEN_STATISTICS.ifInErrors and is counted in Packets Received.
Packets Received with Symbol Error	The number of received packets dropped due to physical coding errors (symbol errors) on a physical port. If there is high rate increment of this counter, consider cable/optical module replacement. This counter is summed in OID_GEN_STATISTICS.ifInErrors and is counted in Packets Received.
Packets Received with Bad CRC Error	The number of dropped received packets due to FCS (Frame Check Sequence) errors on the physical port according to IEEE 802.3 standard. If this counter is increased in high rate, check the link quality and consider cable/optical module replacement. This counter is summed in OID_GEN_STATISTICS.ifInErrors and is counted in Packets Received.
Packets Received Discarded^a	The number of received packets which had no errors and were dropped due to lack of buffers on a physical port. If this counter is increasing, it implies that the adapter is congested and cannot absorb the traffic coming from the network. This counter is summed in OID_GEN_STATISTICS.ifInDiscards and is not counted in Packets Received.

Note a: Those error/discard counters are related to layer-2 issues, such as CRC, length, and type errors. There is a possibility of an error/discard in the higher interface level. For example, a packet can be discarded for the lack of a receive buffer, or when there is no steering rule defined to receive it. To see the sum of all error/discard packets, read the Windows Network-Interface Counters. Note that for IPoIB, the Mellanox counters are for IB layer-2 issues only, and Windows Network-Interface counters are for interface level issues.