# Socket Monitoring

### Introduction

Not really a whole lot to say here other than collectl does not report any socket details at this time but only summary data, which it gets from /proc/net/sockstat. In brief format the data reported is the number of sockets in use by their type, specifically TCP, UDP and Raw. It also reports the number if IP fragments. In verbose more it break things out at lower levels of detail.

In most cases this is of minimal interest unless you're trying to track down a specific socket related problem. In the cases of a runaway process or someone opening but not closing sockets this number has been seen to grow quite large and even consume all resources causing a system crash, but those cases are pretty rare. In any event, during times of strange behavior it can't hurt to have a look at these numbers if for no other reason than to rule out socket problems.

updated August 30, 2011