From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Miller Subject: Re: network devices don't handle pci_dma_mapping_error()'s Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:31:26 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <20061206.183126.59673915.davem@davemloft.net> References: <20061206165835.5391b75d@dxpl.pdx.osdl.net> <20061206.171317.85392745.davem@davemloft.net> <45777A0C.4010901@hp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: shemminger@osdl.org, muli@il.ibm.com, jeff@garzik.org, amitkale@netxen.com, netdev@vger.kernel.org, brazilnut@us.ibm.com, netxenproj@linsyssoft.com, rob@netxen.com, romieu@fr.zoreil.com, sanjeev@netxen.com, wendyx@us.ibm.com Return-path: Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:52460 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-FAIL-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S967699AbWLGCbP (ORCPT ); Wed, 6 Dec 2006 21:31:15 -0500 To: rick.jones2@hp.com In-Reply-To: <45777A0C.4010901@hp.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org From: Rick Jones Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:18:52 -0800 > While tossing a TCP|UDP|SCTP|etc packet could be plusungood, especially > if the IOMMU fills frequently (for some suitable definiton of > frequently), is it really worth the effort to save say an ACK? ACKs are less important than data packets sure. But the drivers shouldn't be parsing packets at transmit time to decide what to do. And when this kind of thing fails, it's going to fail for all the packets currently queued up to the device for transmit. So it's likely not "just an ACK", but rather a set of several packets composed of ACKs and data packets.