Generalized Linux network statistics
While working on the neighbour cache, I introduced some generic neighbour cache statistics. They are done in the core, but exported to userspace for every ncache separately (arp, ndisc, atm_clip, decnet). I used the same techniques and file format as rt_stat.
Martin Josefsson also recently introduced ctstat, the same kind of statistics for ip_conntrack. He did a copy+paste 'port' of the rtstat userspace program. I now also needed four more new copy+paste 'port's. And I couldn't do it. Copy+Paste style ports are what I am fighting in the iptables world for two years, so I certainly don't want to introduce them elsewhere..
The result is what I call lnstat. It's a generalized version of rtstat, it works with neighbour cache, routing cache and conntrack statistics - either separately or all at the same time. It has user-defined formatting (field width) and key selection, as well as some other bells and whistles. Let's hope this gets integrated with iproute2 soon, so people can benefit from it.
I also thought about writing some daemon, but abandoned that idea in favour of writing a ulogd2 plugin for it... this means ulogd2 will be able to log per-packet, per-flow and generic things such as statistics...