From: Timur Tabi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:45:13 -0500
> I think a more accurate question would be, "what TCP/IP stack am I > talking to, today?" You're making it sound as if TOE fundamentally > changes the entire Linux kernel, when it only affects networking. Networking is arguably about half of the kernel, and Linux is pretty useless for most folks without networking. The point remains that TOE creates an ENORMOUS support burdon upon us, and makes bugs harder to field even if we add the "TOE Taint" thing. You say what users will expect, and that they will understand, but history in other areas shows that they simply don't. Even after clicking the license agreement et al. on the NVIDIA web site when downloading their binary-only graphics drivers for Linux, people STILL REPORT crashes to linux-kernel and various distribution vendors with that driver loaded. Think people won't report bugs caused by TOE here? Think again... It's a huge problem, and many man hours are wasted on this. The next issue is when customers ask "Well I paid $500 for this TOE card, how come I can't do netfilter or traffic classification?". And they will ask distribution vendors and places like the linux-kernel and netdev mailing lists these questions, creating a further burdon upon us. Finally, even ignoring all of that, the argument for stack maintainability is still there. TOE puts it's hooks deep into the networking stack, and that in and of itself is a long-term maintainence problem. I am still very much against TOE going into the Linux networking stack. There are ways to obtain TOE's performance without necessitating stateful support in the cards, everything that's worthwhile can be done with stateless offloads. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
