I'm building a tool that runs on a text-based console. It's an application-specific proxy server, relaying data (generally, queries) from a small handful of clients to a hardware device, and the data from that device (generally, query responses) back to the clients.
As a sort of realtime status indication, I'm showing the packet counts to/from each device. This tells the user whether or not the data has made it from clients to the proxy server, and whether or not the hardware device has responded and packets have been sent back to the client.
One bit of trouble I'm having is disambiguating the direction in which data is traveling. I wrote the tool, and even I'm confused by my own table so I'm hoping for some suggestions.
Here's the output I have now:
x32-proxy v1.0.0 - Copyright © 2018, AudioPump, Inc.
Upstream X32: 10.0.1.165:10023
Listening: [::]:10023
Clients
------------------------------------------------
address port packets-tx packets-rx
----------------- ----- ---------- ----------
::ffff:10.0.1.209 49549 13,722 2,590
::ffff:10.0.9.121 49549 15,322 5,312
The packets-tx
column is intended to indicate the number of packets from the proxy to the client. The packets-rx
column is intended to indicate the number of packets from the client to the proxy.
My initial thought was to swap the order of the columns, since there will usually be a packet from the client to the proxy (and on to the device) before there will be a packet from the device, through the proxy, and back to the client. But, most things use the TX/RX ordering.
How can I clear up this confusion for my users? (Or, is this a non-issue?)