getifaddrs() scalability

[Jinmei_Tatuya at isc.org]

At Sat, 5 Apr 2008 18:50:34 +0200,
Max Laier <max at love2party.net> wrote:

> > As such the getifaddrs() call is likely to get slow in that scenario,
> > as it uses a linked list.
> 
> I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve.  getifaddrs is the API to get 
> a complete and consistent snapshot of all currently configured addresses 
> and I don't think there is a better way to represent that then a linked 
> list.  If you need to do lookups in userland you should build your own 
> data structure off of that list.  You can use a PF_ROUTE socket to watch 
> for changes and modify your view accordingly.

If getifaddrs() is used to search for something, the linear aspect
can be a serious overhead that could be actually avoided.  For
example, the current implementation of if_indextoname() calls
getaddrinfo() and search the returned list of ifaddrs for the
interface name that matches the given index.  It requires a linear
order regarding the number of interfaces (and addresses), but it could
in theory be done in O(1).

---
JINMEI, Tatuya
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.