Network IO - procfs - system

What it does#

It reads the cumulative amount of bytes received and transmitted on each network interface of the host by parsing /proc/net/dev. This allows monitoring system-wide network usage independent of containers.

Classname#

• NetworkIoProcfsSystemProvider

Metric Name#

• network_io_procfs_system

Input Parameters#

• args
  • -i: interval in milliseconds

By default the measurement interval is 100 ms.

./metric-provider-binary -i 100

Output#

This metric provider prints to Stdout a continuous stream of data. The format of the data is as follows:

TIMESTAMP RECEIVED_BYTES TRANSMITTED_BYTES INTERFACE

Where:

• TIMESTAMP: Unix timestamp, in microseconds
• RECEIVED_BYTES: Total bytes received by the interface since system boot
• TRANSMITTED_BYTES: Total bytes transmitted by the interface since system boot
• INTERFACE: Name of the network interface (for example, eth0)

Any errors are printed to Stderr.

How it works#

The provider reads the counters from /proc/net/dev for every network interface. The values are sorted by interface and timestamp. Optionally, virtual interfaces are filtered out so only physical network adapters are included.

For each interface, the difference between consecutive measurements is computed internally to obtain the bytes transmitted during the sampling interval. The sum of received and transmitted bytes forms the final value reported for the interval.

System-wide network traffic is not attributed to specific containers. When analyzing energy consumption based on these values, you may combine them with the Network Carbon Intensity → page for further guidance.