The command show counter global provides information about the processes/actions taken on the packets passing through the device; whether they are dropped, NAT-ed, decrypted and so on. These counters are for all the traffic and are useful in troubleshooting poor performance, packet loss, latency, and so on. Use the command show counter global filter packet-filter yes delta yes with filters to obtain meaningful data.
There are severity levels associated with each counter: warn, info, error, and drop. To get more information about a particular counter, use show counter global name <counter_name>
To get counters of a particular type, use show counter global filter severity <warn|info|error|drop>
It is beyond the scope of this document to list the significance of every counter.
Sample outputs
The value column in the example is the number since dataplane restart:
admin@PA-2050(active)> show counter global
Global counters:
Elapsed time since last sampling: 58.590 seconds
name value rate severity category aspect description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pkt_recv 2730633 20 info packet pktproc Packets received
pkt_sent 1438995 6 info packet pktproc Packets transmitted
pkt_alloc 24717 0 info packet resource Packets allocated
The command show counter global filter delta yes gives the snapshot of the counters that incremented since the last show counter global and the elapsed time. Per this output, the elapsed time is 3.6s and 43 packets were received.
admin@PA-2050(active)> show counter global filter delta yes
Global counters:
Elapsed time since last sampling: 3.675 seconds
name value rate severity category aspect description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pkt_recv 43 11 info packet pktproc Packets received
pkt_sent 22 5 info packet pktproc Packets transmitted
flow_np_pkt_rcv 32 8 info flow offload Packets received from offload processor
The command show counter global filter delta yes severity drop gives the counters of a specific level.
admin@PA-2050(active)> show counter global filter delta yes severity drop
Global counters:
Elapsed time since last sampling: 119.254 seconds
name value rate severity category aspect description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
flow_rcv_dot1q_tag_err 5 0 drop flow parse Packets dropped: 802.1q tag not configured
flow_no_interface 5 0 drop flow parse Packets dropped: invalid interface
There are several options available to filter the output of show counter global:
admin@PA-2050(active)> show counter global
> filter Apply counter filters
> name Counter name
| Pipe through a command
<Enter> Finish input
admin@PA-2050(active)> show counter global filter
+ aspect Counter aspect
+ category Counter category
+ delta Difference from last read
+ packet-filter Counters for packet that matches debug filter
+ severity Counter severity
+ value value
| Pipe through a command
<Enter> Finish input
admin@PA-2050(active)> show counter global filter delta yes
+ aspect Counter aspect
+ category Counter category
+ packet-filter Counters for packet that matches debug filter
+ severity Counter severity
+ value value
| Pipe through a command
<Enter> Finish input
See Also