Re: managed switches on mii(4)

[Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl%beer.org@localhost>]

On 8-Apr-08, at 11:59 AM, David Young wrote:

> Let me suggest a different approach to supporting the Marvell  
> switch than
> switchctl.  We already have a familiar abstraction for an ethernet  
> port in
> our existing drivers (tlp(4), wm(4), et cetera), for a switch/hub/ 
> bridge
> in bridge(4), and for a VLAN in vlan(4).  Let us reuse those.   
> Represent
> the ports in the Marvell switch using 11 interfaces, mrvl0..mrvl10.
> Change each port's media settings and such in the usual way with  
> ifconfig.
> Connect/partition ports on the switch with bridge(4).  Add and remove
> VLAN tags on some ports with vlan(4).  Let the underlying hardware  
> driver
> set the switching matrix and other parameters in order to optimize the
> configuration of mrvl0..10, vlan0..N, and bridge0..M.

I'm not immediately convinced that's a good idea.  Suddenly you're  
moving the configuration of the switch to a bunch of extra utilities  
like brconfig, ifconfig... There are other functions like clearing  
mac addresses out of the cache on certain ports that don't  
necessarily fit into any specific utility, and other functions like  
querying the various status registers and event counters in the  
switch hardware, that would creep into everywhere...

The project I'm currently on considers this problem 'solved' so I  
won't be able to put any time towards it while I have access to  
hardware...