Metric to Count Network Connections Per Process

[josepcorrea]

Area(s)

No response

What's missing?

We would like to request a new metric to count the number of network connections per process. Currently, the hostmetricsreceiver does not provide this information, and there doesn't seem to be an existing metric that gives a per-process count of network connections.

Being able to track the number of network connections per process would be useful for monitoring and troubleshooting scenarios, such as identifying processes with a high number of open network connections or detecting potential connection leaks.

Describe the solution you'd like

Please consider adding a metric that counts the number of network connections per process to the system metric semantic conventions. Once the metric is added and standardized, we can plan for its implementation in the hostmetricsreceiver and OpenTelemetry.

[braydonk]

CC @open-telemetry/semconv-system-approvers

I did a cursory investigation and determined that this metric should be collectible on any supported platform. I haven't had enough time to dig in very deep though.

My instinct is to say the definition should look something like:
Name: process.network.connection.count
Type: UpDownCounter int
No attributes I can think of

If anyone from the System Semconv or someone generally interested in contributing to SemConv is able to pick this up sooner than me, I welcome it. It seems straightforward enough. We need:

• A PR to model/process/metrics.yaml to add this definition
• A written description for our records of how this data can be collected on supported platforms, with any edge cases or caveats noted so we can decide whether to include them in notes on the metric

If no one picks this up, I expect to be able to get to this in April. Unfortunately I know the members of our group are quite busy with KubeCon coming up and me going on vacation soon. I'm adding the help wanted label on the off chance an interested contributor would like to pick this up before I can get to it.