Re: [mpls-linux-general] Netlink Vs ioctl

[James R. L. <jl...@mi...>]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 09:46:15AM +0530, Abhijit Gadgil wrote:
> James R. Leu wrote :
> 
> >Now (in mpls-linux-1.1xx) I've moved back to using ioctl for everything.
> >Netlink is nice, it works, but is a little over kill for what I'm doing.
> 
> What you call as overkill I would say flexibility.

.. but that flexibility always comes at a cost, complexity.  It's not rocket
science, but it does take a bit more work.  Right now I'd rather spent my
time getting everything else to work.  Eventually, maybe I'll have the time
an williness to re-implement the netlink stuff, and take full advantage
of what it has to offer.  Until then I'll stick to my trusty ioctl calls.

> >If I ever need to send notification back to userland about MPLS changes, then
> >I'll consider netlink again.
> 
> One will have to eventually - eg. Stuff like Label Resource Available etc.
> Cannot be done so effectively without netlink.  Also repeatatively packets
> with some label(s) are causing problems, netlink is the way to notify the
> userspace abt it.

Not to nit pick, but label managment is a userland issue, not the
responsibility of the forwarding plane.

> I think question here is becoming more _religious_. However I have seen
> some draft few days back which was aiming at making netlink a standard
> interface between userspace/kernelspace. Donno how and when this will
> happen.

If/when I get MPLS integrated into the standard kernel I'll
worry about that :-)

> 
> -abhijit
> 
-- 
James R. Leu