[openib-general] IPoIB Loading and Starting

[Roland Dreier]

    Michael> The IBTA defined the specifications to establish standard
    Michael> wire protocols to discover services without having to
    Michael> track all potential services.  The IETF does not address
    Michael> how P_Keys are managed only that the IP over IB component
    Michael> must follow a set of semantics / operations to enable IP
    Michael> communication; all IB-specific management issues are
    Michael> outside the scope of the drafts.

    Michael> As another person put it - embrace and extend.  The
    Michael> approach being advocated is something that will be
    Michael> interoperable and provides a solution that can be easily
    Michael> incorporated into all IP over IB implementations.  It
    Michael> also clarifies the ambiguous IB - admin management
    Michael> interactions for IP communications.

Until an IPoIB service is mandated somewhere, IPoIB implementations
need to work even on subnets where the service is not registered.
Which means a bit of extra complexity to handle both the case where
the service doesn't exist because the subnet has not implemented the
management scheme and the case where the service doesn't exist because
the administrator doesn't want to configure IPoIB for a given partition.

In any case -- my plate is quite full at the moment.  Any code to
implement better IPoIB management will be welcomed but I won't be able
to right it for quite some time.

 - Roland