From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Marcel Holtmann Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 0/5] net: L2 only interfaces Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 21:24:49 -0700 Message-ID: References: <1440543015-14693-1-git-send-email-f.fainelli@gmail.com> <20150825.171248.291365392844717283.davem@davemloft.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 8.2 \(2104\)) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Cc: f.fainelli@gmail.com, Network Development , andrew@lunn.ch, Guenter Roeck , jiri@resnulli.us, sfeldma@gmail.com To: "David S. Miller" Return-path: Received: from senator.holtmann.net ([87.106.208.187]:38820 "EHLO mail.holtmann.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750794AbbHZEY6 convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Aug 2015 00:24:58 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20150825.171248.291365392844717283.davem@davemloft.net> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hi Dave, >> This patch series implements a L2 only interface concept which >> basically denies any kind of IP address configuration on these >> interfaces, but still allows them to be used as configuration >> end-points to keep using ethtool and friends. >> >> A cleaner approach might be to finally come up with the concept of >> net_port which a net_device would be a superset of, but this still >> raises tons of questions as to whether we should be modifying >> userland tools to be able to configure/query these >> interfaces. During all the switch talks/discussions last year, it >> seemed to me like th L2-only interface is closest we have to a >> "network port". >> >> Comments, flames, flying tomatoes welcome! > > Interesting, indeed. > > Do you plan to extend this to defining a more minimal network device > sub-type as well? > > Then we can pass "net_device_common" or whatever around as a common > base type of actual net device "implementations". > > Or is you main goal just getting the L2-only semantic? the other end of this could be also an IP only net_device where we do not have ethtool semantics. We do have a need for a IPv6 only net_device when utilizing ARPHRD_6LOWPAN for 802.15.4 and Bluetooth LE. Skipping in_dev initialization there might be an interesting step towards that. Not sure how much entangled in_dev and in6_dev still are. If it works for IFF_L2_ONLY, it might work also in the other direction. Regards Marcel