[net] protecting interfaces from races between control and data ?

[Adrian Chadd]

.. and I bet it's not a design pattern, and this is total conjecture on my part:

* the original drivers weren't SMP safe;
* noone really sat down and figured out how to correctly synchronise
all of this stuff;
* people did the minimum amount of work to keep the driver from
immediately crashing, but didn't really think things through at a
larger scale.

Almost every driver is this way Luigi. :-)



-adrian