Jason Thorpe writes:
>  > Now, one final note: despite all the above, I don't really like the
>  > notion of moving ARP out into user-land.  It feels too much like
>  > something that really belongs in the Ethernet device drivers, and was
>  > pulled out of them only to improve code sharing...and then got re-used
>  > for similar address resolution protocols on other media.
> 
> The only thing that really bothers me about moving ARP into userland is 
> that one would have to actually start the ARP daemon in order to be able 
> to use the network ... not really a biggie, but in some circumstances, 
> it's really nice to be able to boot into single-user mode (maybe off of a 
> floppy), just ifconfig the interface, and go... I don't want to have to 
> rely on an ARP daemon or /usr/sbin/arp ...

I don't know, but ARP has always felt fine to me just where it is.

The thing that bothers me about it is that the whole thing feels like
a large project that doesn't buy much, especially in the light of the
fact that IPv6 totally deprecates ARPs functionality so it isn't
likely people will need new ARP stype protocols forever.

Also, maybe we ought to discuss this with some of the BSDI and/or
FreeBSD people and get more feedback -- it would be nice to be able to
continue to share networking code, after all...

Perry