netstat interface output

[Doug Hardie]

I am starting to develop a nagios check for errors on interfaces.  However, there are some issues with the entries in netstat that I don't understand.  Each interface has multiple entries:  one for each address and one for the link.  It would seem to me that the link counts would be the sum of the other address entries, but it is not.  Often it is way off.  At first I thought it was possibly caused by overflows of the counters since most systems have been running for months.  However, checking one system that was only up for one day, the ip4 count was considerably larger than the link count.  This is shown in one of the examples below.

The other issue is one system seems to lose addresses.  The address quits responding, although one address remains and does work.  That interface has a DHPC assigned address along with several fixed addresses.  For the first few days, all addresses work fine.  Then all the fixed addresses disappear and no longer work.  The netstat output for this is shown below.  The first is approximately 1 day after the system was booted and all addresses are working.  The second is the next day and only the DHCP assigned address remains.  Unfortunately that system is remote and without the fixed addresses I can't access it to get to the messages file.

Network interface status:
Name    Mtu Network       Address              Ipkts Ierrs Idrop    Opkts Oerrs  Coll  Drop
bge0   1500 <Link#1>      68:5b:35:ab:96:52  3703649     0     0  1911094     0     0     0 
bge0      - 192.168.1.205 192.168.1.205            0     -     -        0     -     -     - 
bge0      - 10.0.1.205/32 10.0.1.205               0     -     -        0     -     -     - 
bge0      - 192.168.0.205 192.168.0.205          498     -     -        0     -     -     - 
bge0      - 192.168.0.0/2 192.168.0.7        3700267     -     -  1912398     -     -     - 
lo0   16384 <Link#2>      lo0                      0     0     0        0     0     0     0 
lo0       - localhost     localhost                0     -     -        0     -     -     - 
lo0       - fe80::%lo0/64 fe80::1%lo0              0     -     -        0     -     -     - 
lo0       - your-net      localhost                0     -     -        0     -     -     - 

Local system status:
3:01AM  up 1 day,  8:08, 0 users, load averages: 0.18, 0.16, 0.11



Network interface status:
Name    Mtu Network       Address              Ipkts Ierrs Idrop    Opkts Oerrs  Coll  Drop
bge0   1500 <Link#1>      68:5b:35:ab:96:52  6420868     0     0  3313113     0     0     0 
bge0      - 192.168.0.0/2 192.168.0.7        1809545     -     -   934183     -     -     - 
lo0   16384 <Link#2>      lo0                      0     0     0        0     0     0     0 
lo0       - localhost     localhost                0     -     -        0     -     -     - 
lo0       - fe80::%lo0/64 fe80::1%lo0              0     -     -        0     -     -     - 
lo0       - your-net      localhost                0     -     -        0     -     -     - 

Local system status:
3:01AM  up 2 days,  8:08, 0 users, load averages: 0.04, 0.11, 0.08


Any ideas what could cause this?

— Doug