niff(7)niff(7)NAMEniff - Network Interface Failure Finder (NIFF) introductory informa‐
tion.
DESCRIPTION
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 appli‐
cation that subscribes to NIFF's EVM events. Appropriate courses of
action may include selecting another network interface for communica‐
tion 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 snap‐
shot. 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 con‐
figuration 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 gener‐
ator 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)
