Files
meshcore-analyzer/docs
efitenandClaude Opus 5 efdb3ea0b3 feat(analytics): retransmission pressure over time (#1699) (#2023)
## Summary
Adds `GET /api/analytics/retransmissions` and a "Retransmission Pressure
(proxy)" chart on the Analytics Topology tab, implementing the metric
agreed in #1699: for each flood, the number of distinct repeaters in the
union of the paths of all its observations (`[A]`, `[A,B,C]`, `[A,D]`
gives 4), averaged per time bucket.

Topology is the tab that already shows hop counts and repeaters in
paths, so the chart sits there instead of in a new tab.

## Definition
- Flood routes only (`route_type` 0/1); TRACE excluded. Direct routes
carry the route still to travel (firmware
`src/Mesh.cpp:78-106,334-342`), zero-hop sends are direct
(`src/Mesh.cpp:717-737`), TRACE path bytes are SNR values
(`src/Mesh.cpp:59-61`, refused by `sendFlood` at
`src/Mesh.cpp:637-641`). Firmware commit 0679dbef.
- **Flood events, not hashes.** `transmissions.hash` is UNIQUE and the
packet hash excludes the path (`src/Packet.cpp:41-50`), so when the same
bytes flood again the observations land on the same transmission.
Observations are sorted by time and split into events wherever two
consecutive observations are more than 5 minutes apart. Each event is
counted on its own and bucketed by its first observation.
- Why 5 minutes: a node holds a flood for at most 32 s
(`src/Dispatcher.cpp:11,243-251`) plus a random retransmit delay. On
live over 7 days, 72,806 of 74,347 flood transmissions span 60 s or
less, and of 1,372,283 consecutive observation gaps, 52 fall between 60
s and 300 s against 1,823 above 300 s.
- Events that start before the store retention floor (now minus
`retentionHours`) are left out for every request shape. The store keeps
older observations only for hashes heard again recently, so they do not
represent that period. Eviction of those transmissions is tracked in
#2024.
- A flood event heard only with an empty path counts as 0 repeaters.
- **Prefixes are not resolved to nodes, and a prefix counts once per
event**, whether it repeats across observations or inside one path. On
live (7 days), a repeated 2-byte prefix inside one path occurs in 1.08%
of flood transmissions and 6,178 of 6,596 such repeats match exactly one
known node; for 3-byte it is 0.69% and 104 of 104. That is one node
forwarding again after its 160-slot cyclic duplicate filter dropped the
hash (`src/helpers/SimpleMeshTables.h:9,52-57`). A repeated 1-byte
prefix (44.9% of 1-byte transmissions) is mostly two nodes; counting it
once keeps the value a lower bound. `summary.one_byte_packets` reports
how many events that affects.
- Observations are stored once per observer and path per hash, so a
later event of the same hash only holds pairs not stored before; its
count is a lower bound too. On live these are 1,466 of 75,356 events
(1.9%), and they are kept in the average.
- Resolution was not used: on live, 1-byte observations nearly all have
`resolved_path` NULL, and cold load refuses context-based resolution of
history (`cmd/server/neighbor_persist.go:155-168`).
- Buckets `5m|15m|1h|6h|1d`. `region` filters on observers like
`/api/analytics/rf`, after the event split; a region with no known
observers is not filtered, the same as the other analytics endpoints.
`area` is not supported.

## Implementation
- `cmd/server/retransmission_pressure.go:255` `addPath`: scans path JSON
directly into a generation-stamped hash set, no allocation per
observation.
- `cmd/server/retransmission_pressure.go:367`
`computeRetransmissionPressure`: one pass under `s.mu.RLock`. Per flood
transmission it sorts the observations by cached parsed time into a
reused scratch slice, splits events and counts each in `addEvent`
(`:319`). O(T + O log k + H).
- `cmd/server/retransmission_pressure.go:470`
`GetRetransmissionPressure`: default shape from the recomputer (#1659
warm-up gate). Other shapes come from a typed TTL cache (max 64 entries)
cleared on new paths and eviction (`cmd/server/store.go:2289,2336`);
concurrent misses on one key share one compute through singleflight
(`store.go:204`).
- `cmd/server/retransmission_pressure.go:515` handler,
`cmd/server/routes.go:331`, `cmd/server/openapi.go:108`,
`docs/api-spec.md:1283`.
- `public/analytics.js:761` card, `:855` `renderRetransmissionChart`
(CSS variables only, lines break at missing buckets, caption states it
is a proxy, names the observer coverage bias, the once-per-flood prefix
rule and the 5 minute event split), `:829` loader with stale-response
guard.

## Performance
- `BenchmarkComputeRetransmissionPressure`, 50k transmissions x 20
observations, `-cpu 1`, i5-1335U: median 161 ms/op (132 ms/op before the
event split); first pass after startup with timestamps not yet parsed
192 ms/op. About 22 KB and 281 allocations per op.
- On staging the default shape is served from the recomputer in 0.3 s;
the post-load recompute of this recomputer took 994 ms on a
121k-transmission store (log line quoted in #2025). A 336h store would
be about twice that, every recompute interval, under the store read
lock.

## Tests
- `cmd/server/retransmission_pressure_test.go`: union counting (reporter
example, overlaps, once per event for 1/2/3-byte, width/case, growth);
route/TRACE/zero-hop filter, bucketing, window by event start; event
split and the 5 minute settle gap (boundary, chained steps, unsorted
input), retention floor; region filter, region applied after the split,
unknown region, 1-byte share; recomputer read, TTL cache invalidation on
new paths and on eviction, cache expiry, singleflight, recomputer gate
wiring, handler, warm-up gate.
- `test-issue-1699-retransmission-chart.js` (33 tests, registered in
`test-all.sh` and `deploy.yml`).
- Mutation-checked: 18 mutations of the event split, floor, prefix rule,
bucketing, region order, cache clears, expiry, gate wiring and
singleflight, all killed.
- `go test ./...` in cmd/server passes; `scripts/check-css-vars.js` OK.

## Staging validation
Build `c646310f` (this rework plus #2025 and the other review
follow-ups), after a container restart and full load: default shape
74,974 flood events, average 27.08 repeaters, 169 hourly buckets from
2026-09-06 16:00 (the 168h floor) to the current hour, highest hourly
average 53.3. Before the rework the same instance showed buckets back to
2026-07-18, averages up to 148, and for the first minutes after a
restart only 5,911 packets.

## Merge order with #2025
#2025 fixes the recomputer startup for all analytics endpoints (the
stale first snapshot seen here). Whichever of the two merges second has
to add `recompRetransmissions` to `analyticsRecomputersLocked`, wire it
to that PR's `loadedGate` instead of `LoadComplete`, bump the recomputer
count in `TestAnalyticsRecomputers_PostLoadOrder` from 9 to 10, and make
`TestStartAnalyticsRecomputers_RetransmissionsGatedOnLoadComplete` call
`signalStartupLoadDone()`. That resolution is what ran on staging.

## Not verified
- Recompute timing on a production-size (336h) store; only extrapolated.
- Phone-width layout and dark theme of the reworked chart.
- E2E Playwright suite.

Fixes #1699

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-13 20:37:14 +02:00
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