From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Gagan Arneja Subject: Re: [RFC] New driver API to speed up small packets xmits Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 22:01:37 -0700 Message-ID: <4643F8B1.5030803@gmail.com> References: <464370BA.3020907@hp.com> <20070510.133216.95506791.davem@davemloft.net> <46438568.1020403@hp.com> <20070510.140251.02302242.davem@davemloft.net> <46438B1D.1050802@gmail.com> <20070510192814.5b71d01c@freepuppy> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Gagan Arneja , David Miller , rick.jones2@hp.com, vladislav.yasevich@hp.com, ian.mcdonald@jandi.co.nz, krkumar2@in.ibm.com, johnpol@2ka.mipt.ru, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Stephen Hemminger Return-path: Received: from gretel.pobox.com ([208.58.1.197]:50270 "EHLO gretel.pobox.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753395AbXEKFDz (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 May 2007 01:03:55 -0400 Received: from sceptre.pobox.com (sceptre.pobox.com [207.106.133.20]) by gretel.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A26A60F2685 for ; Fri, 11 May 2007 01:03:02 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <20070510192814.5b71d01c@freepuppy> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org > If you have braindead slow hardware, > there is nothing that says your start_xmit routine can't do its own > coalescing. The cost of calling the transmit routine is the responsibility > of the driver, not the core network code. Yes, except you very likely run the risk of the driver introducing latency. The problem is prevalent enough that one can argue for a fix (a better one at that) higher up. And it's not all that high up that we need to get completely paranoid about it. > -- > Stephen Hemminger > -- Gagan