Re: Tcp/ip offload card driver

Nivedita Singhvi
2002-05-10T17:36:20Z

> Obviously some form of driver is necessary to access the
> device, whether or not we're pushing fully formed IP packets
> or raw payload. Or is that a userland problem and I'm just
> not understanding the flow from userspace through the kernel
> and to the driver properly?

> Cheers,
> Nicholas Harring

Your initial premise seemed to include the offload of TCP
as well. Doesn't that mean:

application -> driver -> card [ creates full TCP/IP pkt ]

TCP is stateful, feature rich and highly configurable.
Do you expect that a fw/hw implementation will provide
an equivalent implementation? Support for tuning, options,
network taps, diag, bug fixes, feature tweaks, ... ?

Very curious..

thanks,
Nivedita