Re: [Linux-ATM-General] Better instrumenting ATM/DSL

[Philip P. <phi...@re...>]

On 12/7/10 12:37 PM, chas williams - CONTRACTOR wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Dec 2010 12:39:56 -0800
> Philip Prindeville<phi...@re...>  wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> I was thinking about how the kernel assigns IfIndex numbers for
>> (amongst other things) SNMP to interfaces, and the fact that ATM
>> doesn't use netdev's means that it can't be given one that's
>> meaningful.
>>
>> It also can't be the source or sync for netlink messages
>> (route/link.h).
>>
>> How could the ATM infrastructure be modified to better integrate with
>> the kernel's notion of what an 'interface' is?
> at one point there was talking about convering atm_device to use a
> net_device instead.  this would have fixed a couple of problems at once:
> the device registration/allocation races, shutdown/removal races,
> duplication of code, et al. the big drawback might be that raw atm
> devices would appear if the output of ifconfig which might be confusing.
>
> atm isnt alone in this.  infiniband maintains is own private device
> structure and registration code.  so conversion might not be necessary.
>
> as far as netlink, i think we just need to define a netlink family
> for atm devices and them create the necessary routines to generate
> and handle these messages.  go through the archives.  there was some
> talk about this too at one point.

What's the downside of using net_device's?

-Philip