what is the story on if_index allocation ?

[Luigi Rizzo]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 03:43:30PM -0700, Bill Fumerola wrote:
...
> 
> they're "un-needed" in much the same way that statically assigning disk
> numbers is "un-needed". sure, the disks don't light on fire without it,
> but some consistancy and persistance does make things nice.
...
> i disagree that this logic belongs outside the kernel in the snmp agent.

"outside the kernel" just means it can be in a library so consistency
is preserved. After all if_nametoindex() is already a library.

In any case my point is that in the kernel we do need an identifier
associated to existing interfaces that can be used to quickly
lookup information associated to the interface and that for
various reasons (historical, locking, modularity)
could be split in different data structures.

If if_index does not have that semantics fine, then we just need
something else.

cheers
luigi

> an inconsistant if_index makes it difficult and error prone for using
> the index in multiple utilities whose data may be combined/joined/scaled
> with information from the snmp agent's IF-MIB/ifXTable tables.
> 
> -- 
> - bill fumerola / fumerola at yahoo-inc.com / billf at FreeBSD.org
> 
> 
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