Index for Section 7

Alphabetical listing for N

Bottom of page

niff(7)
NAME
  niff - Network Interface Failure Finder (NIFF) introductory information.

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 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)

Index for Section 7

Alphabetical listing for N

Top of page