niff - Network Interface Failure Finder (NIFF) introductory
information.
The Network Interface Failure Finder, NIFF, is a facility
for detecting and reporting possible failures in network
interface cards (NICs) or their connections. Detection is
done by monitoring device counters and attempting to generate
traffic to NICs suspected of having failed. Reporting
is done using the Event Manager subsystem (EVM). NIFF
does not drive failover operations; that is the responsibility
of the application that subscribes to NIFF's EVM
events. Appropriate courses of action may include selecting
another network interface for communication or if it
is a clustered environment, migrating an application. See
nr(7) for further information.
At the heart of NIFF is the traffic monitor thread. The
traffic monitor thread tracks changes in the network
device's counters, and notes if the received packet
counter remains unchanged since the previous snapshot. As
long as the counter continues to increase, the traffic
monitor thread assumes the NIC is functioning. See
nifftmt(7) for further information.
The traffic monitor thread can monitor any network interface.
The configuration utility, niffconfig, is used to
activate and administer the traffic monitor thread. See
nifftmt(7) and niffconfig(8) for further information.
The Network Interface Failure Finder daemon, niffd, is a
traffic generator for network interfaces that have been
classified inactive by the kernel traffic monitor thread.
The purpose of niffd is to get the interface packet counters
to increment, signifying the interface is still alive
and well. See niffd(8) for further information.
SEE ALSO:
nifftmt(7) ,nr(7) , niffconfig(8), niffd(8)
niff(7)
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