Subject: [babel] info-model: enable/disable statistics

From: "STARK, BARBARA H" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2019 15:19:32 +0000

Previously (according to my notes from Bangkok) we had agreed to have some optional statistics parameters.

Here's what I had recorded: 
Under interface object: sent multicast Hello, sent updates, received Babel messages; under neighbor object: sent unicast Hello, sent updates, sent IHU, received Hello, received updates, received IHUs. Would also need to enable/disable stats and clear stats.

I'm having some discussion with Mahesh (over at https://github.com/bhstark2/babel-information-model/tree/PR1) about the "enable/disable stats" part of this. So I'd appreciate additional group input.

Note that all statistics parameters are optional to implement.

Is it useful to be able to enable/disable collection of statistics, or should an implementation that supports statistics simply always collect them? My view is that it's possible that collecting statistics can cause performance issues in some less-capable devices. In this case, the enable/disable parameter is a good idea. Since the parameter is optional, an implementation that would expect no performance issues and wants to have statistics collection always enabled can simply choose not to implement the parameter.

If defining the (optional) ability to enable/disable statistics is agreed to, should it be at the interface level, or global?

Barbara