Forum Discussion
haeoraki_127471
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusAbout GLOBAL_STATISTIC_TOTAL_CONNECTIONS
Two nodes connect to BIG-IP device.
When I check the value of GLOBAL_STATISTIC_TOTAL_CONNECTIONS, it
is 0 at first.
When I connect to one node with web browser, the value of GLOBAL_STATISTIC_TOTAL_CONNECTIONS increase 1. Until now all seem correct. But when I connect to same node with web browser(it means that I run another web browser and enter same node ip at address part), the value of GLOBAL_STATISTIC_TOTAL_CONNECTIONS does not change. It means still 1)
I run web browser at other computer and connect to the node. But the value does not change. Why not change to 2?
And if I close all brower, it must be 0. But it does not. What's wrong?
Best Regards,
haeoraki_127471When I refreshed and refreshed web browser which connect to a node, the value of GLOBAL_STATISTIC_CURRENT_CONNECTIONS did not change. It was always 0.- First of all, I'm assuming that you are connecting to a node through a VIP. This is not explicitly stated in your message and it could be inferred that when you said "connect to node" you meant directing the browser to the ip address of the node, and not the VIP that is managed by.
Assuming that you are going through a VIP, the curernt connections represent the number of connections that are active at the time you request the statistic. If you are just using a browser to connect to a web page, then odds are the browser is not keeping a session open to the node but creating and then tearing it down after the page is rendered. Then you are requesting the statistic after the connection is already torn down by the browser so the statistic request will show 0 current connections. The only way to really test this is to throw a bunch of parallel recursive GET's (wget and curl come to mind as useful client side tools) and then monitor the statistics while connections are being made.
As for the total connections issue. Total connections represent a running total of all the connections that have come in through the given VIP or Pool (depending on which statistic you are getting). This is a counter that should never drop back to 0 unless you specifically reset the statistics or the counter rolls over past the 32bit boundary of an integer.
You might try getting the statistics for the specific VIP or Pool that you are flowing traffic through and see if the values are correct there. I'm not sure why the global total connections don't go up with parallel browser requests.
I've tried to answer this the best I can, but this really isn't an iControl development question, but one of the functionality of the BIG-IP. If you need further assistance with how the BIG-IP's statistics are generated, I'd recommend you contact our BIG-IP support group where you can get a better answer.
F5 Technical Support
Email: support@f5.com
Phone: 206-272-6888
Web: http://www.f5.com/support/
AskF5: http://tech.f5.com/
If find out more information on the total connections issue, I'll post it here.
-Joe 
dotzero_127322And if I close all brower, it must be 0. But it does not. What's wrong?
Not enough information on the other points but your statement above is incorrect. When you look at current connections, the Bigip is showing OPEN connections. They do not have to actually be doing anything.
So, if you have requested a page through your browser and the page has completed loading. You immediately close the browser and check for current connections. You will still see the open connection from your request. The Bigip will wait for the webserver to go through time_wait, fin_wait and fin_wait2 before the connection is closed. The amount of time this takes will depend on the settings on the webserver host.
Granted, there are a lot of exceptions to this general behavior but the point is that closing your browser does not mean the connection on the bigip or webserver (node) immediately gets cleaned up.
Dotzero
