niff(7) 						 Miscellaneous Information Manual						   niff(7)

NAME

       niff - Network Interface Failure Finder (NIFF) introductory information.

DESCRIPTION

       The  Network  Interface Failure Finder, NIFF, is a facility for detecting and reporting possible failures in network interface cards (NICs)
       or their connections. Detection is done by monitoring device counters and attempting to	generate  traffic  to  NICs  suspected	of  having
       failed.	Reporting is done using the Event Manager subsystem (EVM).  NIFF does not drive failover operations; that is the responsibility of
       the application that subscribes to NIFF's EVM events. Appropriate courses of action may include selecting  another  network  interface  for
       communication or if it is a clustered environment, migrating an application.  See nr(7) for further information.

       At  the	heart of NIFF is the traffic monitor thread. The traffic monitor thread tracks changes in the network device's counters, and notes
       if the received packet counter remains unchanged since the previous snapshot. As long as the counter continues  to  increase,  the  traffic
       monitor thread assumes the NIC is functioning. See nifftmt(7) for further information.

       The  traffic  monitor  thread can monitor any network interface.  The configuration utility, niffconfig, is used to activate and administer
       the traffic monitor thread. See nifftmt(7) and niffconfig(8) for further information.

       The Network Interface Failure Finder daemon, niffd, is a traffic generator for network interfaces that have been classified inactive by the
       kernel traffic monitor thread. The purpose of niffd is to get the interface packet counters to increment, signifying the interface is still
       alive and well. See niffd(8) for further information.

SEE ALSO
:
       nifftmt(7), nr(7), niffconfig(8), niffd(8) delim off

																	   niff(7)