Re: git: 0ec13430c583 - main - sys/netinet6: Fix ABI breakage introduced with RFC 7217 support

On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 11:44 AM Guido Falsi <madpilot@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 9/22/25 17:37, Jonathan T. Looney wrote:
> > This seems like it is probably a low-frequency event. If so, why is a
> > counter a better choice for this than an atomic?
> >
>
> I used counters because they were already being used in the netinet6
> code, and are a good match for the use.
>

What makes them a good match for the use? Counters are generally best for
write-often, read-rarely (by comparison) things, like statistics, where we
want to avoid contention in a often-used critical path. For low-frequency
events, the expense of keeping the counters (memory usage multiplied by the
number of cores; more difficult debugging; etc.) may outweigh the benefits.

Jonathan