Real-time application-controlled TCP/IP trace NMI (EZBRCIFR)

The real-time application-controlled TCP/IP trace NMI is a callable NMI that provides real-time TCP/IP stack data to network management applications based on filters that are set by an application trace instance. Each application can use the NMI to open multiple trace instances and set unique filters for each trace instance to obtain the desired data. Filters can be set for the following trace types:
  • Data trace
  • Packet trace
The application will receive information about real-time data that is lost. The information is provided in the form of lost trace records. See Lost records for detailed information about these trace records. In contrast, the real-time TCP/IP network monitoring NMI provides real-time data based on the global settings for the TCP/IP stack and the applications are not notified of lost data. The real-time data that matches the application filters is provided in trace records. These trace records are similar to the trace records that are provided by the real-time TCP/IP network monitoring NMI.
As part of collecting the real-time data for the applications, the NMI uses 64-bit shared storage that it shares with the application address space. The NMI also uses 64-bit common storage that the TCP/IP address space owns.
64-bit shared storage
The 64-bit shared storage is used as a staging buffer between a TCP/IP stack and a trace instance to store the real-time data as trace records, until the trace instance requests the records. The amount of 64-bit shared storage is limited by the HVSHARE parameter in member IEASYSxx of PARMLIB. To use this NMI, some 64-bit shared memory storage must be configured on the HVSHARE parameter.
64-bit common storage
This storage is used as a collection buffer for the real-time data. The NMI allocates 64 MB of storage for this buffer. The NMI uses the collection buffer to store trace records for all applications that are using the NMI. The trace records are then copied to the staging buffer for each application trace instance whose filters match the data in the trace record. The amount of 64-bit common storage is limited by the HVCOMMON parameter in member IEASYSxx of PARMLIB. To use this NMI, 64-bit common memory storage must be configured on the HVCOMMON parameter. You can use the DISPLAY TCPIP,,STOR command to see the amount of 64-bit common storage that all functions use in the TCP/IP address space.

You can use the DISPLAY TCPIP,,TRACE command to display information about the applications that use the NMI and information about the resources that the NMI uses.

In order for applications to be able to access the real-time data, you must define new System Authorization Facility (SAF) profiles in the SERVAUTH class and authorize the user IDs of the applications to the profiles.

The real-time application-controlled TCP/IP trace NMI supports several requests that are used to obtain the real-time data. The following topics describe the details for enabling applications to use the NMI, for invoking the requests, and for processing the request output: