[dpdk-dev] [PATCH] ethdev: expose link status and speed using xstats

[Kyle Larose]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Harry van Haaren
<harry.van.haaren at intel.com> wrote:
> This patch exposes link duplex, speed, and status via the
> existing xstats API.
>

I'm slightly confused by this. Why are we exposing operational
properties of the chip through an API which I thought was primarily
targeting statistics? When I think of statistics and a NIC, I think of
values which are monotonically increasing. I think of values that are
derived primary from the packets flowing through the system. I do not
think of link state, link speed and duplex, which have nothing to do
with packets, and are not monotonic.

Should we not have a separate API to get this type information? I
mean, just because we have a generic "string to uint64_t" map doesn't
mean we should toss in anything that can fit into a uin64_t. Would you
want to see the MAC address in here as well? If we put in link
speed/etc. it seems like we may as well!

Thanks,

Kyle