Bridges
Scott Long
scottl at samsco.org
Sat Sep 24 08:34:39 PDT 2005
Max Laier wrote:
> 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 This means the old code is obsolete.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.
>
I'm fine with it being removed in HEAD. You should change the docs and
whatever appropriate manpages in 6-STABLE to clearly indicate that it is
deprecated there and may be removed in the future.
Scott
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