[smokeping-users] Packet loss calculations in Smokeping

[Vern.Dias at VerizonWireless.com]

I have received a question from our network management group concerning
how the packet loss is calculated by Smokeping.

I have tried to understand this and failed miserably.

For example, here is a record from one of my rrd files:

1170982800: NaN 5.3841740667e+00 3.5863971281e-02 3.4867749856e-02
3.4867749856e-02 3.4867749856e-02 3.4867749856e-02 3.5863971281e-02
3.5863971281e-02 3.5863971281e-02 3.5863971281e-02 3.5863971281e-02
3.9848856978e-02

Loss  5.3841740667e+00 

Ping Median  00 3.5863971281e-02 

Ping 1  3.4867749856e-02 
Ping 2  3.4867749856e-02 
Ping 3  3.4867749856e-02
Ping 4  3.4867749856e-02
Ping 5  3.5863971281e-02
Ping 6  3.5863971281e-02
Ping 7  3.5863971281e-02
Ping 8  3.5863971281e-02
Ping 9  3.5863971281e-02
Ping 10 3.9848856978e-02

Several questions:  

Where did the 5.3841740667e+00 for packet loss come from?  How was it
calculated?  

Does the percentage reflecting in that calculation only come from this
specific RRD record?  

How can a loss calculation base on 10 pings not return a loss percentage
that is 10%, 20% 30%, etc?

Or does it somehow span multiple records? All 10 fields in the record
show values, although many are exactly the same, which is highly
unlikely. I only see 3 unique values, which tells me that the packet
loss was more like 70% (three good response time numbers and Smokeping
likely just kept the previous value for the packets that were lost)? 

Help on these questions would be highly appreciated.

Vern  


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