Request: show interfaces

[Ian Lepore]

On Fri, 2020-05-29 at 12:01 -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > It?s always bugged me that Unix doesn?t show as much information as
> > a typical router 
> > does about ethernet interface statistics.
> > 
> > What we really need is the equivalent of Cisco ?show interface?
> 
> One could write that, or enhance bird or frr to have additional
> output in
> there show interfaces command.  Bird is a bit sparse:
> rgrimes {1001}% birdc show interfaces
> BIRD 1.5.0 ready.
> vmx0 up (index=1)
>         MultiAccess Broadcast Multicast AdminUp LinkUp MTU=1500
>         64.62.249.151/27 (Primary, scope univ)
> vmx1 DOWN (index=2)
>         MultiAccess Broadcast Multicast AdminUp LinkUp MTU=1500
> vmx2 up (index=3)
>         MultiAccess Broadcast Multicast AdminUp LinkUp MTU=1500
>         10.4.0.4/24 (Primary, scope site)
> 
> Infact an ifconfig -a gives you at least the negotiated interface
> rate in addition to some other fields.
> 
> > 
> > This shows the bit rate, packet rate, count, all the various type
> > of errors, etc.
> 
> By bit rate do you mean interface configured bit rate,
> or bit rate over last short interval?
> Cisco shows both, short interval being 5 minutes.  BSD ifconfig shows
> former.
> 
> Adding some of the Cisco like stats would not be hard, and possibly
> useful,
> especially for me the Input queue size/max/drops/flushes, though much
> of that may be very device specific due to offload.
> 
> > 
> > Cisco allows a description field to be set for each interface, and
> > that shows up also in a ?show int? output.
> 
> That feature already exists, see ifconfig(8) "description value".
> 
> > I think these would be great features, considering how ofter
> > FreeBSD is used for routers and firewalls.
> 
> ifconfig --format=cisco -a ??
> 
> > Thanks,
> > Joe
> > Joe McGuckin
> 
> 

Doesn't "netstat -i" already provide all the statistical info except
bitrate in the last short period?  Maybe it could be enhanced with a 
different output format that provides a set of info more like the cisco
show interface output (maybe when invoked with -I as oppposed to -i).

-- Ian