This very small patch uses iproute2's ip(8) tool to display link statistics in 
sostat.
It offers much more detail then ifconfig e.g. an additional 4 stat fields per 
direction (RX and TX).
In my opinion it's also easier to read.

e.g. Notice how eth4 has instances of dropped, overrun, and misses for packets 
in the above output.

$ ip -s -s link show eth4
6: eth4: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,NOARP,PROMISC,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq 
state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether 9c:8e:99:53:e3:30 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    RX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped overrun mcast   
    1361950677217 1745618628 0       179     47323   12119074
    RX errors: length  crc     frame   fifo    missed
               0        0       0       0       1725828
    TX: bytes  packets  errors  dropped carrier collsns 
    0          0        0       0       0       0      
    TX errors: aborted fifo    window  heartbeat
               0        0       0       0