[openib-general] RE: [PATCH] [ib_addr] generalize address to RDMA device translation

[Steve Wise]

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 12:25 -0800, Sean Hefty wrote:
> Caitlin Bestler wrote:
> > Sniffing is a workaround. Subscription is the correct
> > solution here for long term stability.
> > 
> > Subscription is also the only solution that will correctly
> > respond when the system administrator has manually loaded
> > an ARP entry.
> > 
> > This also applies to Routing and ICMP.
> 
> To clarify, ib_addr does not actually "sniff" ARPs.  It simply uses them to 
> schedule its workqueue thread to check for updates.  Manually loaded ARP entries 
> would the same as any previously loaded entries.  If there is a subscription 
> based mechanism that can be used as well or instead, it should be 
> straightforward to update ib_addr.  I am just not familiar enough with the Linux 
> network stack to know if such a mechanism exists.

There is a subscription service that is used for notification of netdev
events.  It uses the base notifier_block services (see
include/linux/notifier.h and net/core/dev.c).  

Our thoughts were to enhance this to allow notifications of neighbour,
route, and pmtu events as well.


Steve.