Prometheus Counter envoy_cluster_upstream_rq is producing a sawtooth graph, instead of being linear.

[Kishore Kumar]

Hello Envoy community,

             I hope the person reading this has a wonderful day ahead.

I am currently using envoy_cluster_upstream_rq for determining the inbound traffic for my kubernetes pods.

The metric produces a sawtooth looking , instead of an expected always increasing graph ( as it is a counter, it should be always increasing or constant, but not increasing).

May I know what might be the reason for this discrepancy?

Thank you for your time,

Kishore