Bridges

[Max Laier]

All,

for some time now, we have three bridge implementations in the tree:
 - net/bridge.c         - the "old" bridge
 - net/if_bridge.c      - the "new" bridge from Net/OpenBSD
 - netgraph/ng_bridge.c - the netgraph version [1]

The new code has several advantages over the old version:
 - Spanning Tree Protocol (802.1D)
 - better firewall support (IPv6, stateful filtering, ...)
 - easy ifconfig(8) configuration

while keeping all the functionality that was present in the old code:
 - dummynet support
 - IPFW L2 support [2]

There have been some benchmarks that suggest that there isn't a performance 
issue either, but more numbers are always appreciated.  If it turns out that 
there is any remaining problem with if_bridge we need to fix it.  If you are 
running an old bridge on 6.0-BETA try moving to the new code and let us know.

This means the old code is obsolete.  In order to keep code duplication down 
and not hinder further development (Andre is working on an overhaul of [2] 
and would have to do it twice, for example) I would like to retire the old 
bridge code soon.  This should happen in HEAD only and thus the old bridge 
will stay for all of FreeBSD 6 unless more aggressive depreciation is 
requested.

Please test the new alternative if you are using the old one still.  Let us 
know if there are any issues remaining.

Objections against soon retirement of bridge.c in HEAD?

[1] listed for completeness only.

-- 
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