Re: managed switches on mii(4)

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 01:24:00PM -0600, Herb Peyerl wrote:
> 
> 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...

I don't understand what you mean by "extra utilities."  ifconfig and
brconfig already exist.  I reckon that they can cover the most common
switch use cases, too.

> There are other functions like clearing  
> mac addresses out of the cache on certain ports that don't  
> necessarily fit into any specific utility,

That's a good fit for brconfig(8).  The manual page already mentions

     deladdr address
             Delete address from the address cache.

> and other functions like  
> querying the various status registers and event counters in the  
> switch hardware, that would creep into everywhere...

Why do you think so?

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933 ext 24