From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753700AbXLDR1t (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:27:49 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753226AbXLDR1i (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:27:38 -0500 Received: from zcars04f.nortel.com ([47.129.242.57]:38150 "EHLO zcars04f.nortel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753168AbXLDR1h (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Dec 2007 12:27:37 -0500 Message-ID: <47558DFC.5050601@nortel.com> Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 11:27:24 -0600 From: "Chris Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2-6 (X11/20050513) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, bonding-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: when using arp monitoring with bonding, why use broadcast arps? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 04 Dec 2007 17:27:28.0698 (UTC) FILETIME=[F1A401A0:01C8369A] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org We have a network with a number of nodes using bonding with arp monitoring. The arp interval is set to 100ms. Unfortunately, the bonding code sends the arp packets to the hardware broadcast address, which means that the number of these arp packets seen by each node goes up with the number of nodes on the network. One of the nodes has a fairly low-powered cpu and handles most things in microengine code, but arp packets get handled in software. All these broadcast arps slow this node down noticeably. Is there any particular reason why the bonding code couldn't use unicast arp packets if the "arp_ip_target" has a valid entry in the sender's arp table? Thanks, Chris