Re: RFC: per-socket statistics on received/dropped packets

[Lincoln Dale]

g'day Alan,

At 03:03 AM 23/06/2002 +0100, you wrote:
> > i know of many many folk who use transaction logs from HTTP caches for
> > volume-based billing.
> > right now, those bills are anywhere between 10% to 25% incorrect.
> >
> > you call that "extremely limited"?
>
>It wouldnt help you anyway. Prove which frames were not due to the
>overloading and congestion/errors on your network which therefore the 
>customer should
>not have a duty to pay. Account for bitstuffing on HDLC links...

sure - but these are all Layer-8 (politics) and layer-9 (religion) issues.

typically Service Providers on this side of the planet handle that side of 
things via SLAs internal to their own network.  i.e. "we guarantee X% 
uptime, less than Y% packet-loss across our own core network as measured 
using XXYYZZ method".

the fact that an IP packet may have a PPP header on it across one hop, a 
HDLC header across another, perhaps some MPLS labels across another, 
802.1q-in-802.1q across another is generally immaterial.
if you did want to get fancy and account for it, at least you have 
packet-counters on a per-socket basis from which to do that with.
without per-socket accounting, you just don't have that anyway.

cheers,

lincoln.