> It is possible, but I do not believe that this thing is really useful.
> ARP is enough cheap to prefer background pinging to new syscall,
> made in data path. Besides that, it requires, that datagram protocols,
> keeping some state (f.e. DNS) become system dependant.
> This thing has no chances to live.
For DNS it would be overkill I agree, but for other protocols (like Coda
which does bulk transfer over an UDP(?) based RPC protocol in userspace)
it could be useful. Also a system call is still much much cheaper than
sending and receiving an ARP packet, which also introduces "bubbles"
into long running data transfers.
> Well, I think, when this element will appear (or recognized to be useless)
> for IPv6, we will port it back to IPv4.
Is this considered by the working groups?
> What's about this case: using user level notifications in this case
> is not solution. If target does not answer arp, it is broken,
> no advanced tricks will change this fact and any cure is just workaround.
> Increasing timeout is the easiest workaround, at least.
My thinking was just that everything that is possible for a kernel protocol
should be possible for a user level protocol too - no unfair advantage
for the kernel ;)
-Andi
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