RE: Entirely ignoring TCP and UDP checksum in kernel level

Lee Revell
2004-08-21T08:41:13Z

On Sat, 2004-08-21 at 04:27, Denis Vlasenko wrote:
> On Saturday 21 August 2004 12:18, Josan Kadett wrote:
> > That is not much of an intelligible idea. A way to hack the kernel could be
> > found as I still presume. "Turn off checksums" but not by re-writing the
> > whole tcp code in the kernel. Isn't that possible ? Linux is an operating
> > system of infinite possibilities, right ? But only if you know how to hack
> > it...
>
> Of course you can hack the kernel to do it.
>
> However, by replacing that box with Linux device you
> get one more Linux box and you will be capable of
> doing whole slew of useful things, like traffic filtering, shaping,
> accounting, Ethernet bridging, etc etc etc, if/when you will need it.
> You can easily debug problems with tools like tcpdump and ethereal.
> I simply cannot list everything Linux can do, I don't plan to write
> a novel here ;]
>
> I bet current 'crazy box' has nothing even vaguely resembling
> these capabilities. Heck, it cannot do standard TCP properly.
> So there is little reason to waste your time trying to work around it.

He already stated that he was dealing with a very expensive, very broken
piece of hardware, and he needs a way to work around it. Many of us
have been in this situation, I will not name names ;-). Telling him to
just replace it is not helpful.

Lee