what is the story on if_index allocation ?

[Milan Obuch]

On Wednesday 21 April 2004 08:58, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 09:53:37AM +0300, Petri Helenius wrote:
> ...
>
> > Relevant quote from the RFC:
>
> a very appropriate one indeed, which seems to substantiate my point.
>
> >    interfaces that might be added dynamically.  The exact meaning of a
> >    "different" interface is hard to define, and there will be gray
> >    areas.  Any firm definition in this document would likely turn out to
> >    be inadequate.  Instead, implementors must choose what it means in
> >    their particular situation, subject to the following rules:
>
> so if there are gray areas in defining 'different' the same applies
> to defining 'same' :)
>
> cheers
> luigi
>

I would say the easiest way is to take any new interface as 'different' in 
relation to any once existed but deleted in past interface and let the 
management station define what does it mean to be 'the same' interface.
We would have sparsely allocated ifindex values after some interface 
creation/deletion, which is not a big issue to me.
I would not think there is one-to-one mapping even for one network management 
solution, it depends on actual needs.
Regards,
Milan