Statistics

Statistics

Statistics & Monitoring Tools

PeerCache™ includes a powerful suite of built-in statistics and monitoring tools designed to help administrators analyze cache performance, monitor system health, and optimize network efficiency.

The default PeerCache installation provides graphical monitoring dashboards accessible through a web-based interface, enabling real-time visibility into cache operations, traffic behavior, and system resource utilization.

The statistics interface provides multiple graph hierarchies covering both administrative monitoring and advanced development diagnostics.

PeerCache™ Generic & Administrative Statistics

Hit Ratio

The Hit Ratio graph displays the effectiveness of cache utilization.

Metrics Included

Green Area: Volume (byte) hit ratio
- Percentage of total traffic served directly from cache instead of external sources.
Blue Line: Request hit ratio
- Percentage of requests served from cache compared to total incoming requests.

Additional Insights

Volume hit ratio is often significantly higher than request hit ratio because:

Cached downloads are usually completed more successfully
Local cache delivery is faster than external sources
Failed or interrupted external downloads count as request misses even when no actual data transfer occurs

Cache Directory Size

Displays total disk usage of the PeerCache storage directory.

This graph assumes the cache directory is:

/home/peercache/cache

If symbolic links are used to additional storage locations, those directories are included in the total calculation.

CPU Usage

Monitors the CPU utilization percentage of the PeerCache process.

Helps administrators identify:

Performance bottlenecks
High-load periods
Resource scaling requirements

Uptime

Shows the total uptime of the PeerCache service measured in hours.

Useful for monitoring:

System stability
Restart frequency
Operational reliability

Clients

Tracks active and unique client activity.

Graph Metrics

Green Area: Simultaneous active connections/downloads
Red Line: Unique client IP addresses during last 5 minutes
Black Line: Unique client IP addresses during last 1 hour

This helps administrators understand user activity and traffic demand patterns.

Unique IPs in Last 24 Hours

Displays the total number of unique client IP addresses accessing PeerCache within a 24-hour period.

Useful for:

Usage analytics
Subscriber activity estimation
Capacity planning

Network Traffic

All traffic values are displayed in bits per second (bps).

Traffic Graph Indicators

Blue Area: Outgoing interface traffic
Green Area: Total outgoing cache traffic
Yellow Area: Cache hit traffic served locally
Red Line: Incoming network traffic

This graph provides a complete overview of traffic flow and bandwidth savings.

Service Time

Measures average request completion time.

Blue Area: Average request processing time in seconds

This metric indicates how long downloads take to complete on average and helps evaluate overall cache responsiveness.

Memory Usage

Displays PeerCache memory consumption.

Graph Components

Blue Area: Virtual memory size
Green Area: Resident memory size

Memory usage statistics help administrators optimize resource allocation and scalability planning.

Connections

Tracks requests processed per second.

Request Types

Dark Blue: Total requests
Light Blue: Push requests (firewall-related)
Green: ICP requests
Red: Rejected requests

Rejected Requests

Requests may be rejected when system resource limits are reached, including:

Maximum simultaneous downloads
Swapping queue limitations
Disk I/O bottlenecks

The relationship between requests and active downloads can be estimated using:

Requests per second × Average service time ≈ Simultaneous downloads

Average Transfer Speeds

Shows average content delivery speeds to clients.

Speed Indicators

Green Line: Average cache hit transfer speed
Red Line: Average cache miss transfer speed
Blue Line: Combined average transfer speed

These metrics demonstrate the acceleration benefits of local cache delivery.

Requests to KMD 2.x Clients

Displays the percentage of requests originating from FastTrack version 2.x and newer clients.

This detection is based on port behavior:

Older clients used fixed port 1214
Newer clients use randomized ports

PeerCache™ Development & Advanced Statistics

These statistics are primarily intended for advanced diagnostics, troubleshooting, and development analysis.

Swapping Information

Displays average data block swapping activity between memory and hard disk.

Metrics

Red Area: Blocks swapped into memory
Blue Area: Blocks swapped to disk

Excessive swapping may indicate storage performance limitations.

Cached Objects

Shows the number of cached content objects.

Graph Details

Green Area: Objects stored on disk
Blue Line: Objects stored in memory
Displayed at 10× scale for visibility

Storage Blocks

Monitors memory block states within PeerCache.

Block States

Green: Free blocks
Dark Blue: Idle blocks
Light Blue: Hinted blocks
Red: Busy blocks actively transferring data

This graph provides detailed visibility into memory management and cache behavior.

Processing Times

Displays processing time across different PeerCache operational states.

These diagnostics help developers identify:

Internal processing bottlenecks
Performance inefficiencies
Resource optimization opportunities

Swapping Queue

Tracks the number of memory blocks waiting for hard disk read/write operations.

Performance Warning

If the swapping queue consistently exceeds:

100 items

it may indicate a hard disk I/O bottleneck.

In such cases, the system may begin rejecting requests due to insufficient resources.

Performance Recommendation

For maximum performance and scalability, Joltid recommends:

Using multiple separate hard drives
Avoiding RAID configurations for cache storage
Optimizing disk I/O throughput for high-traffic environments

PeerCache™ monitoring tools provide comprehensive visibility into cache efficiency, bandwidth savings, system health, and enterprise-scale network performance.