From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/1] cxgb3i: cxgb3 iSCSI initiator Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:49:32 -0400 Message-ID: <489EE3DC.9060202@pobox.com> References: <200807300019.m6U0JkdY012558@localhost.localdomain> <200807311752.00911.divy@chelsio.com> <200808071145.03848.divy@chelsio.com> <489C8BEB.8060001@opengridcomputing.com> <489CC58D.4010606@pobox.com> <20080810101935.5c8e8e9a@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Roland Dreier , Steve Wise , davem@davemloft.net, Divy Le Ray , Karen Xie , netdev@vger.kernel.org, open-iscsi@googlegroups.com, michaelc@cs.wisc.edu, daisyc@us.ibm.com, wenxiong@us.ibm.com, bhua@us.ibm.com, Dimitrios Michailidis , Casey Leedom , linux-scsi , LKML To: Alan Cox Return-path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:40609 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753447AbYHJMtu (ORCPT ); Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:49:50 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20080810101935.5c8e8e9a@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Alan Cox wrote: >> - It doesn't work in theory, because the suggestion (I guess) is that >> the iSCSI HBA has its own MAC and IP and behaves like a separate > > The iSCSI HBA is its own system - that is the root of the problem. Indeed. Just like with TOE, from the net stack's point of view, an iSCSI HBA is essentially a wholly asynchronous remote system [with a really fast communication bus like PCI Express]. As such, the task becomes updating the net stack such that formerly-private resources are now shared with an independent, external system... with all the complexity, additional failure modes, and additional security complications that come along with that. Jeff