From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Greear Subject: Re: [PATCH, untested] Support for PPPOE on SMP Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 15:53:10 -0700 Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Message-ID: <3EFA27D6.2000007@candelatech.com> References: <20030625072602.529AF2C0B9@lists.samba.org> <1056547262.1945.1436.camel@brick.watson.ibm.com> <20030625091531.5ebed618.shemminger@osdl.org> <20030625122128.V84526@shell.cyberus.ca> <20030625093902.7431efc3.shemminger@osdl.org> <20030625125518.N84526@shell.cyberus.ca> <16122.8374.178895.287907@nanango.paulus.ozlabs.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jamal Hadi , Stephen Hemminger , mostrows@watson.ibm.com, rusty@rustcorp.com.au, davem@redhat.com, netdev@oss.sgi.com, dfs@roaringpenguin.com, carlson@workingcode.com Return-path: To: Paul Mackerras In-Reply-To: <16122.8374.178895.287907@nanango.paulus.ozlabs.org> Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Paul Mackerras wrote: > Jamal Hadi writes: > > >>a protocol or implementation which wishes to do state maintanance >>properly oughta be able to do the synchronization on its own. >>Separation between policy and mechanism has been the strength of unix. >>A clean separation between control and a data path is very important. >>Control protocols tend to be very rich environments which are >>constantly changing. Take STP, there are so many features that could be >>added to STP that are much harder to add because it is in the kernel. >> >>Maybe what needs to be looked at i sthe design of pppoe or ppp. > > > OK, now that we have had our little flight of fancy about what things > will be like once we get to heaven, can we talk about this bastard > protocol called PPPoE? :) > > Or are you going to go personally to each ISP in the world and tell > them they shouldn't use PPPoE? :) > > In any case the problem isn't strictly with PPPoE, since ethernet > doesn't reorder packets on the wire. The problem is that the lower > parts of the Linux network stack lose information. > > Paul. Nothing is guaranteed, but you may be right at least most of the time. Btw, if you want a proprietary tool that will emulate an ethernet network that reorders packets, I write such a thing and will give it to you. It could help you with testing perhaps. Also, if you have a PCMCIA Zircom NIC, it seems to reorder packets just for the hell of it (and no, I'm not using a dual-cpu laptop :)) I don't know of any other protocols that can't handle reordering, since most of them seem to be designed to run over the real internet, where reordering/drop/duplication is a part of life. Ben > -- Ben Greear President of Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com ScryMUD: http://scry.wanfear.com http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear