>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net> writes:
    der> They are?  I have trouble thinking of any situation not contrived for
    der> the purpose where 64K interface creates occur without an intervening
    der> reboot.  Where did you find such?  It's probably worth preserving as a
    der> stress-test case....
    >> 
    >> Any box with a non-trivial network connection running PPPoE as termination
    >> for dialup/DSL customers. An OC-3 worth of 1Mb/s channels is 100
    >> channels. Average uptime for a Windoz box in use being two-three hours, 
    >> that is 81 days of uptime.
    >> 
    >> I know of vendors putting NetBSD in their systems that expect more than 81
    >> days of uptime.
    >> 
    >> Since these ABIs tend to be hard to change, please burn the 2 bytes and
    >> make it u_int32_t.

    Andrew> does the interface pppoe0 get destroyed and created at each line drop,
    Andrew> or just go up and down?  it's only destruction and creation that cause
    Andrew> the interface index to get bumped...

  Ah. I see. 
  I'm still not clear why the 2 bytes here are so expensive, given typical
padding issues.

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [