From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v7 01/19] Add a new structure for skb buffer from external. Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 16:13:48 -0700 Message-ID: <20100606161348.427822fb@nehalam> References: <1275732899-5423-1-git-send-email-xiaohui.xin@intel.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mst@redhat.com, mingo@elte.hu, davem@davemloft.net, herbert@gondor.apana.org.au, jdike@linux.intel.com To: xiaohui.xin@intel.com Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1275732899-5423-1-git-send-email-xiaohui.xin@intel.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: kvm.vger.kernel.org Still not sure this is a good idea for a couple of reasons: 1. We already have lots of special cases with skb's (frags and fraglist), and skb's travel through a lot of different parts of the kernel. So any new change like this creates lots of exposed points for new bugs. Look at cases like MD5 TCP and netfilter, and forwarding these SKB's to ipsec and ppp and ... 2. SKB's can have infinite lifetime in the kernel. If these buffers come from a fixed size pool in an external device, they can easily all get tied up if you have a slow listener. What happens then?