[openib-general] [RFC] IB address translation using ARP

[Yaron Haviv]

> ________________________________________
> From: Michael Krause [mailto:krause at cup.hp.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 12:29 PM
> To: Yaron Haviv
> Cc: Openib
> Subject: RE: [openib-general] [RFC] IB address translation using ARP
> 
> At 06:24 AM 9/30/2005, Yaron Haviv wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Roland Dreier [ mailto:rolandd at cisco.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 9:50 PM
> > To: Sean Hefty
> > Cc: Yaron Haviv; Openib
> > Subject: Re: [openib-general] [RFC] IB address translation using ARP
> >
> > I think the usage model is the following: you have some magic device
> > that has an IB port on one side and "something else" on the other
> > side.  Think of something like a gateway that talks SDP on the IB side
> > and TCP/IP on the other side.
> >
> 
> >Also applicable to two IB ports, e.g. forwarding SDP traffic from one IB
> >partition to SDP on another partition (may even be the same port with
> >two P_Keys), and doing some load-balancing or traffic management in
> >between, overall there are many use cases for that.
> 
> While I can envision how an endpoint could communicate with another in
> separate partitions, doing so really violates the spirit of the
> partitioning where endpoints must be in the same partition in order to see
> one another and communicate.  

Mike, 
This is exactly the same case as two IPoIB interfaces over same port with two partitions configured with IP routing between them, or a layer 7 proxy that connects two network segments  
I don’t see anything wrong with such a model 

> Attempting to create an intermediary who has
> insights into both and then somehow is able to communicate how to find one
> another using some proprietary (can't be through standards that I can
> think of) method, seems like way too much complexity to be worth it.
> 

Assuming the ULPs on both sides are standards, how the proxy is built and how it functions is application dependent just like people do proxies for XML which don’t need to obey to any standard beside be transparent to both sides.
OpenIB should not block the ability to provide gateway/proxy functionality, or routing traffic beyond a single IP addressing hop.
This is just matching IB to capabilities already available in iWarp.

Yaron