plcrate - Qualcomm Atheros AR7x00 PHY Rate Monitor
plcrate [options] [device] [device]
[...]
The Atheros PHY Rate Utility polls one or more devices and prints
the average transmit and receive PHY rates between a device and each
neighboring network device. Output is column-oriented and suitable for
loading into a spreadsheet or being read by a simple program.
This program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit.
See the plc man page for an overview and installation
instructions.
QCA6410, QCA7000, QCA7420
- -c
- Display coded PHY rates. Coded PHY rates are displayed by default so this
option is redundant but it has been kept for backword compatibility. This
option and option -u are mutually exclusive.
- -d seconds
- Traffic duration in seconds per connection. Directional traffic is
systematically sent between each pair of powerline network devices for
this period of time. Consequently, the total time needed to generate
traffic between all network devices will be approximately n! times
this value, so don''t get carried away. The minimum value is 1
second and the maximum value is 60 seconds.
- -e
- Redirects stderr messages to stdout. By convention status and error
messages are printed on stderr while primary program output is printed on
stdout. This option prints all output on stdout in cases where this is
desired.
- -i interface
- Select the host Ethernet interface. All requests are sent via this host
interface and only reponses received via this host interface are
recognized. The default interface is eth1 because most people use
eth0 as their principle network connection; however, if environment
string "PLC" is defined then it takes precedence over the
default interface. This option then takes precedence over either default.
- -n
- Reads the average transmit and receive PHY rate for wach device using
VS_NW_INFO and prints it on stdout. Each output line displays the ethernet
interface, source address, destination address and either the transmit or
receive PHY rate.
- -o
milliseconds
- Read timeout in milliseconds. Values range from 0 through UINT_MAX. This
is the maximum time allowed for a response. The default is shown in
brackets on the program menu.
- -q
- Enter quiet mode. Progress messages are suppressed.
- -r
- Reads device hardware and software revision information using VS_SW_VER
and prints it on stdout.
- -R
- Resets the device using VS_RS_DEV.
- -s
- Generate only TX traffic between the local device and each remote device
on powerline network. This option is useful to speed up PLC network
testing if the test is run on every node and each receiving side is
checked individually. In other words: this flag is only used in
combination with -t (one-to-many), not when generating traffic
between all powerline peers.
- -t
- Generate powerline traffic between the local device and each remote device
on each powerline network connected to the host. It does not generate any
traffic between remote powerline device pairs. This option is especially
useful when remote powerline devices are not connected to Ethernet devices
capable of sending traffic back to the host.
- -T
- Generate powerline traffic between all devices on each powerline network
connected to the host. This option is similar to option -t but it
takes much longer because traffic is systematically generated between each
pair of powerline devices. Consequently, the time to complete will
increase factorially as the number of network devices increases. Such
complete traffic path coverage is not always needed.
- -u
- Display un-coded PHY rates. Coded PHY rates are displayed by default. This
option and option -c are mutually exclusive.
- -v
- Enter verbose mode. All Etherenet frames sent or received by the program
are displayed on stdout.
- -x
- Exit program on first error with a non-zero exit code. This option allows
shell scripts to detect failed or incomplete operations and take the
appropriate action.
- -?,--help
- Print program help summary on stdout. This option takes precedence over
other options on the command line.
- -!,--version
- Print program version information on stdout. This option takes precedence
over other options on the command line. Use this option when sending
screen dumps to Atheros Technical Support so that they know exactly which
version of the Linux Toolkit you are using.
- device
- The MAC address of some powerline device. More than one address may be
specified. If more than one address is specified then operations are
performed on each device in turn. The default address is local. See
DEVICES for information about symbolic device addresses.
Powerline devices use Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC)
addresses. A MAC address is a 48-bit value entered as 12 hexadecimal digits
in upper, lower or mixed character case. Octets may be separated with colons
for clarity. For example, "00b052000001",
"00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are valid and
equivalent.
The following MAC addresses are special and may be entered by name
instead of number.
- all
- Same as "broadcast".
- broadcast
- A synonym for the Ethernet broadcast address, FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF.
All devices, whether local, remote or foreign recognize messages sent to
this address. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline
connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.
- local
- A synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management
Address (LMA), 00:B0:52:00:00:01. All local Atheros devices
recognize this address but remote and foreign devices do not. A remote
device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign
device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.
See the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug AV Firmware Technical Reference
Manual for more information.
The following example displays the average transmit and receive
PHY rates from each of two devices. One is a local device connected to
interface eth2 and the other is a remote device at the far end of the
powerline. In this case, they are the only two devices on the powerline
network. Observe the recipricol rates shown.
# plcrate -ni eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:AA 00:B0:52:00:00:BB
eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:AA 00:B0:52:00:00:BB TX 163 mbps
eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:AA 00:B0:52:00:00:BB RX 176 mbps
eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:BB 00:B0:52:00:00:AA TX 176 mbps
eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:BB 00:B0:52:00:00:AA RX 163 mbps
The following example generates powerline traffic between the
local device and each remote device because option -t is present. It
then displays the PHY rate read from the local device.
# plcrate -tni eth2
eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:AA 00:B0:52:00:00:BB TX 163 mbps
eth2 00:B0:52:00:00:AA 00:B0:52:00:00:BB RX 176 mbps
Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message Entry
structure and content is proprietary to Qualcomm Atheros, Ocala FL USA.
Consequently, public information may not be available. Qualcomm Atheros
reserves the right to modify message structure and content in future
firmware releases without any obligation to notify or compensate users of
this program.
PLC(1), amprate(1),
int6krate(1)
Nathaniel Houghton
Charles Maier