Itlwm: [AirportItlwm] How to monitor Upload/Download speed?

[JyotiPRoy]

Have You Read Our Docs
Yes

Are You Reporting A Bug
No (Asking for help)

Environment

• Kext Version: AirportItlwm_v1.0_Beta_Catalina.kext
• WiFi Card Model: AC 9560
• Product ID: 0xA370
• macOS Version: 10.15.6

Description
I have installed the beta version of AirportItlwm on Catalina (10.15.6). It's working great (for now), but I cannot monitor my network speed. I have tried iStat menu and Bandwidth+ apps to monitor my upload/download speed, but have failed. Realtime upload/download speed is not available (always showing 0MB/s).
I've read the doc FAQ and it only provides a solution for itlwm (by creating a bridge), but no solution for AirportItlwm is given. So I was asking, how can i monitor my realtime upload/download speed on AirportItlwm?

Kext Download Source
The 1.1.0 release.

[williambj1]

I don't use iStat or other similar software and I have no interest in them. Can someone else confirm this issue?

[RaffaySajjad]

I don't use iStat or other similar software and I have no interest in them. Can someone else confirm this issue?

I have the exact same issue. Even activity monitor does not register the WiFi speed for me.

[JyotiPRoy]

I don't use iStat or other similar software and I have no interest in them. Can someone else confirm this issue?

I have the exact same issue. Even activity monitor does not register the WiFi speed for me.

Yeah I forgot to mention that, Activity monitor also doesn't register my upload/download speed and the total data consumption.

[williambj1]

Weird, mine works fine.

[RaffaySajjad]

Weird, mine works fine.
Its so strange. Only Data received/sec is stuck at 0 for me. Rest of the parameters are showing some values. Although I'm a bit skeptical about those, because I have Youtube video streaming at 1080p and Data received is only 98KB??

[williambj1]

Hmmm, just rebooted into Big Sur, seem to work fine as well.

[JyotiPRoy]

You can see below that youtube reports my network speed as 4-5 MB/s, while activity monitor reports 0. Interestingly the activity GoogleChromeHelper shows a data consumption of 169 MB, while the activity monitor summary shows total received data as 59 KB. It's Confusing!

[williambj1]

Should be expected since Youtube uses UDP and has finished buffering.

[JyotiPRoy]

Should be expected since Youtube uses UDP and has finished buffering.

But the data received is shown as 59 KB, it is not possible in case of a 1080p stream. Again I've tested this while opening websites, on video calls etc. It always shows 0 MB/s

[JyotiPRoy]

Idk, if you need any logs to analyse the problem, I'll be happy to provide.

[igorkulman]

Same problem on Catalina. Just downloading an app from brew cask (Calibre, tens of megabytes) and activity monitor says the speed is zero and also zero downloaded bytes.

[LiuLiujie]

Same problem. But using another kext call AppleIntelWifi can monitor the upload/download speed normally.

[usr-sse2]

It's because the input packet counter don't work.

But in the ioreg I see that the counter is actually working, so don't know why macOS ignores it.

[phu54321]

I found that macOS reports download packat as uploads.

• Apparently I'm using Intel AX201. Not Huawei (e8372). That's stats which is false-guessing inet interface.

Maybe some typo?

[phu54321]

Same happening for itlwm. (not airport version) seems like this bug isn't airport-only bug

[davideakadudu]

Have You Read Our Docs
Yes

Are You Reporting A Bug
No (Asking for help)

Environment

• Kext Version: AirportItlwm_v1.0_Beta_Catalina.kext
• WiFi Card Model: AC 9560
• Product ID: 0xA370
• macOS Version: 10.15.6

Description
I have installed the beta version of AirportItlwm on Catalina (10.15.6). It's working great (for now), but I cannot monitor my network speed. I have tried iStat menu and Bandwidth+ apps to monitor my upload/download speed, but have failed. Realtime upload/download speed is not available (always showing 0MB/s).
I've read the doc FAQ and it only provides a solution for itlwm (by creating a bridge), but no solution for AirportItlwm is given. So I was asking, how can i monitor my realtime upload/download speed on AirportItlwm?

Kext Download Source
The 1.1.0 release.

could you help me with airportitlwm on Catalina? I don't know hot to set the config.plist

[adeg]

First of all, thanks to the itlwm team for awesome work on the kext which is working great.

I am having the same issue using _AirportItlwm_v1.0_Beta_Catalina.kext_ on macOS 10.15.7:

• iStat->Network is showing Upload bandwidth usage only for interfaces but does correctly display network usage for processes
• netstat -ib -I en0 is also showing zeroes for everything incoming but for outgoing only byte counters (Obytes) and errors (Oerrs) are non-zero while packet counters (Opkts) are at zero.
• Network Utility->Info is showing all zeroes in Transfer Statistics for Wi-Fi (en0) network interface. Actually, Send Errors counter shows 1, but I am not sure if there was an actual failure that got counted or it's the result of a bug. Since Network Utility->Info interface is not designed to display byte counters, so I wasn't able to compare byte stats with other sources. But since I observed the same single count of a send error, I would think that netstat and Network Utility obtain their counter data from the same source. The one being incorrectly (or partially rather) populated by the kext.
• Activity Monitor->Network seems to correctly report network usage for processes and total

All makes me think that there are multiple counter sources of network usage data, and AirportItlwm is populating only some of them.

[madvinegar]

Same problem here. I am using Airportitlwm.kext, IntelBluetoothFirmware.kext and IntelBluetoothInjector.kext. My wifi and bluetooth work great. (mobo: Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac).
The only problem I have is that I cannot monitor the download speed. My reading is always 0.
Fyi, my wifi/BT card is 0x8087, 0x0aa7 and I run Catalina 10.15.7

Any fix/workaround for this?

[phu54321]

This seems like the code simply isn't yet implemented. Stats querys interface's upload/download speed with:

    private func getBytesInfo(_ pointer: UnsafeMutablePointer<ifaddrs>) -> (upload: Int64, download: Int64)? {
        let addr = pointer.pointee.ifa_addr.pointee

        guard addr.sa_family == UInt8(AF_LINK) else {
            return nil
        }

        let data: UnsafeMutablePointer<if_data>? = unsafeBitCast(pointer.pointee.ifa_data, to: UnsafeMutablePointer<if_data>.self)
        return (upload: Int64(data?.pointee.ifi_obytes ?? 0), download: Int64(data?.pointee.ifi_ibytes ?? 0))
    }

So, upload speed corresponds to ifi_obytes, and download speed corresponds to ifi_ibytes. Both fields originate from if_data struct.

And I don't see any sign of itlwm dealing with if_data field.

---

According to darwin-xnu code, if_data is managed by macOS kernel itself.

static void
dlil_input_stats_sync(struct ifnet *ifp, struct dlil_threading_info *inp)
{
    struct ifnet_stat_increment_param *s = &inp->stats;

    /*
     * Use of atomic operations is unavoidable here because
     * these stats may also be incremented elsewhere via KPIs.
     */
    if (s->packets_in != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_ipackets, s->packets_in);
        s->packets_in = 0;
    }
    if (s->bytes_in != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_ibytes, s->bytes_in);
        s->bytes_in = 0;
    }
    if (s->errors_in != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_ierrors, s->errors_in);
        s->errors_in = 0;
    }

    if (s->packets_out != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_opackets, s->packets_out);
        s->packets_out = 0;
    }
    if (s->bytes_out != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_obytes, s->bytes_out);
        s->bytes_out = 0;
    }
    if (s->errors_out != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_oerrors, s->errors_out);
        s->errors_out = 0;
    }

    if (s->collisions != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_collisions, s->collisions);
        s->collisions = 0;
    }
    if (s->dropped != 0) {
        atomic_add_64(&ifp->if_data.ifi_iqdrops, s->dropped);
        s->dropped = 0;
    }

    if (ifp->if_data_threshold != 0) {
        lck_mtx_convert_spin(&inp->input_lck);
        ifnet_notify_data_threshold(ifp);
    }

    /*
     * No need for atomic operations as they are modified here
     * only from within the DLIL input thread context.
     */
    if (inp->tstats.packets != 0) {
        inp->pstats.ifi_poll_packets += inp->tstats.packets;
        inp->tstats.packets = 0;
    }
    if (inp->tstats.bytes != 0) {
        inp->pstats.ifi_poll_bytes += inp->tstats.bytes;
        inp->tstats.bytes = 0;
    }
}

where packets_in or things are managed by IONetworkInterface::pushInputPacket

[zxystd]

@phu54321
thanks for your comment and investigation, if_data stat is updated correctly, but I don't know why it is show zero in user space while I am successfully count them in kernel space.

the stat pointer is come from here:

bool itlwm::configureInterface(IONetworkInterface *netif) {
    IONetworkData *nd;

    if (super::configureInterface(netif) == false) {
        XYLog("super failed\n");
        return false;
    }

    nd = netif->getParameter(kIONetworkStatsKey);
    if (!nd || !(fpNetStats = (IONetworkStats *)nd->getBuffer())) {
        XYLog("network statistics buffer unavailable?\n");
        return false;
    }
    fHalService->get80211Controller()->ic_ac.ac_if.netStat = fpNetStats;
    fHalService->get80211Controller()->ic_ac.ac_if.iface = OSDynamicCast(IOEthernetInterface, netif);
    fpNetStats->collisions = 0;

    return true;
}

and you can the input counter update in _if_input:

static IOReturn _if_input(OSObject *target, void *arg0, void *arg1, void *arg2, void *arg3)
{
    mbuf_t m;
    bool isEmpty = true;
    struct _ifnet *ifq = (struct _ifnet *)arg0;
    struct mbuf_list *ml = (struct mbuf_list *)arg1;

    MBUF_LIST_FOREACH(ml, m) {
        if (ifq->iface == NULL) {
            panic("%s ifq->iface == NULL!!!\n", __FUNCTION__);
            break;
        }
        if (m == NULL) {
            XYLog("%s m == NULL!!!\n", __FUNCTION__);
            continue;
        }
        //        XYLog("%s %d 啊啊啊啊 ifq->iface->inputPacket(m) hdr_len=%d len=%d\n", __FUNCTION__, __LINE__, mbuf_pkthdr_len(m), mbuf_len(m));
        isEmpty = false;
        ifq->iface->inputPacket(m, 0, IONetworkInterface::kInputOptionQueuePacket);
        if (ifq->netStat != NULL) {
            ifq->netStat->inputPackets++;
        }
    }
    if (!isEmpty) {
        ifq->iface->flushInputQueue();
    }
    return kIOReturnSuccess;
}

maybe I should configure the model as inputpullingmodel, and the value maybe correctly accept.

[phu54321]

Thanks :) This bug also occurs for Realtek USB wifi driver, so I guess this field isn't populated well by most 3rd-party drivers.

getifaddrs calls sysctl_iflist (or sysctl_iflist2, haven't verified)

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/a449c6a3b8014d9406c2ddbdc81795da24aa7443/bsd/net/rtsock.c#L1715

... which calls if_data_internal_to_if_data, which formats if_data to exportable binary format.

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/a449c6a3b8014d9406c2ddbdc81795da24aa7443/bsd/net/if.c#L4714

So if_data seems to be unconditionally copied regardless of _configFlags I think?

---

I know IONetworkData key is updated. (as registered at fHalService->get80211Controller()->ic_ac.ac_if.netStat), but I'm not sure if if_data is updated. Will test with following mod:

```
UInt32 AirportItlwm::outputPacket(mbuf_t m, void *param)
{
// XYLog("%s\n", __FUNCTION__);
_ifnet *ifp = &fHalService->get80211Controller()->ic_ac.ac_if;
const auto& if_data = ifp->if_data;
IOLog("itlwm debug: %d %d %d %d",
if_data.ifi_ibytes,
if_data.ifi_ipackets,
if_data.ifi_obytes,
if_data.ifi_opackets
);

```

[phu54321]

Couldn't get it to compile 👎 sys/queue.h or mach/mach_types.h not found...

maybe will try later

[williambj1]

@phu54321 Make sure you've installed MacKernelSDK from Acidanthera

[zxystd]

turn back to mojave, everything works fine, speed detect is ok.

[phu54321]

not yet verified

if_data not being updated correctly. Tested with tweaked itlwm.kext.

So the issue is triggering update to this struct. Will need more debugging.

---

This doesnt seem to mean anything. struct _ifnet is unrelated to struct ifnet, so if_data is not that is updated by kernel.

[zxystd]

They are the same object, you can print their addresses. when calling attachInterface, controller will internally call createInterface and then call configureInterface, finally call if_attach. so it is no problem.

bool itlwm::configureInterface(IONetworkInterface *netif) {
    IONetworkData *nd;

    if (super::configureInterface(netif) == false) {
        XYLog("super failed\n");
        return false;
    }

    nd = netif->getParameter(kIONetworkStatsKey);
    if (!nd || !(fpNetStats = (IONetworkStats *)nd->getBuffer())) {
        XYLog("network statistics buffer unavailable?\n");
        return false;
    }
    fHalService->get80211Controller()->ic_ac.ac_if.netStat = fpNetStats;
    fHalService->get80211Controller()->ic_ac.ac_if.iface = OSDynamicCast(IOEthernetInterface, netif);
    fpNetStats->collisions = 0;

    return true;
}

IONetworkInterface *itlwm::createInterface()
{
    itlwm_interface *netif = new itlwm_interface;
    if (!netif) {
        return NULL;
    }
    if (!netif->init(this)) {
        netif->release();
        return NULL;
    }
    return netif;
}

[phu54321]

Knew that after investigating codes. Thanks for reply :)

[zxystd]

Knew that after investigating codes. Thanks for reply :)

Also, netstat values are correctly updated, you can see them in ioreg. It seems that macOS(after Catalina) will not rely on input netstat counter for statistical calculation. I don't want to pay too much time on this kind of "displaying issue", but will pay some time on it tomorrow. If you have some investigation result, please let me know, PR will be more fine, Thanks.

[madvinegar]

Good day to you all. Has there been any solution/workaround for this problem...?

[a565109863]

you can use two function How to monitor Upload/Download speed.

IOReturn AppleIntelWiFi::outputStart(IONetworkInterface *interface, IOOptionBits options)
{
    mbuf_t m;
    while ((interface->dequeueOutputPackets(1, &m, NULL, NULL, NULL) == kIOReturnSuccess)) {
        IOReturn ret = this->outputPacket(m, NULL);
        if (ret != kIOReturnSuccess) {
            _ifp->if_oerrors++;
            return ret;
        }
    }

    return kIOReturnNoResources;
}

bool AppleIntelWiFi::configureInterface(IONetworkInterface * netif)
 {
     IONetworkData *data;
     if (super::configureInterface(netif) == false)
         return false;

     // Get the generic network statistics structure.
     data = netif->getParameter(kIONetworkStatsKey);
     if (!data || !(netStats = (IONetworkStats *)data->getBuffer())) {
         return false;
     }
     netStats->collisions = 0;

     netif->configureOutputPullModel(IFQ_MAXLEN, kIONetworkWorkLoopSynchronous);

     return true;
}

[zxystd]

@a565109863 Thanks for your sharing. I am not focusing on this side now, you know there are so many huge works we should do, I will try it this weekend. If you can make a PR that would be great. Thanks.

[d9media]

I am using the wonderful NUCintosh image. Wifi works flawless. Big Thanks to this community for making this work. So much appreciated!

If there is any workaround out there, I too would be very interested to know. It's not super important but sure be nice to have at some point.

[lsvih]

Seems this issue is resolved in latest release

[M69W]

Seems this issue is resolved in latest release

+1

[madvinegar]

Seems this issue is resolved in latest release

What do you mean? In Big Sur? Latest Airportltlwm.kext is still V1.0 beta.

[davideakadudu]

Seems this issue is resolved in latest release

What do you mean? In Big Sur? Latest Airportltlwm.kext is still V1.0 beta.

try this
https://github.com/OpenIntelWireless/itlwm/releases/tag/v1.2.0-alpha

[madvinegar]

Seems this issue is resolved in latest release

What do you mean? In Big Sur? Latest Airportltlwm.kext is still V1.0 beta.

try this
https://github.com/OpenIntelWireless/itlwm/releases/tag/v1.2.0-alpha

Thank you!

[ghost]

wow thanks, for this feature i was waiting, works great!!!!

[d9media]

I can confirm this works for me to on 10.15.7 NUCi5 8th gen. Kudos guys!