System information

Wireless Vital Signs 163
display shows aggregate errors for your ring. Should these aggregate errors indicate a
problem, specific errors by station are available in the FDDI Errors by Station dialog,
and complete SMT and MAC by station information is available in the FDDI SMT and
MAC decodes found in Packet Capture and Decode.
The error groups are Beacons, Error Count, Lost Count, and Not Copied.
Beacons
Beacons indicate that a card (or cards) cannot insert into the ring. Beaconing is used by
FDDI to isolate a break in the FDDI ring. If the node that is beaconing does so for more
than 10 seconds, the ring will assume that this node has a stuck beacon, and the ring will
initiate a self test for each node on the ring. If a node fails the self test, it will remove
itself from the ring. The upstream neighbor on the ring will identify the beaconing
station.
Error Count
An Error Count indicates defective frames on the ring.
Lost Count
Lost Count indicates packets that went around the ring with a valid destination address,
but were not copied (received) by any station.
Not Copied
Not Copied is an SMT frame indicating that a packet was sent, but not copied to the
receiving station. This usually happens because there was not enough buffer space on
the receiving card.
It also points out the total number of SMT and MAC frames for the collection period.
The collection period for the Network Vital Signs can be set under
Options > Selected
Probe or SNMP Device Properties > Vital Sign report (refresh) period (sec)
.
Wireless Vital Signs
Shows current wireless activity mapped with current wireless error conditions on a
wireless network. An NI Wireless driver and supported card are required.
Menu Path
When the currently active probe or device is wireless, choose
Statistics->Network Vital Signs.