On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 22:23:32 GMT, Christos Zoulas <christos@zoulas.com> wrote:
> In article <Pine.GSO.4.61.0412011235160.13890@rfhpc8317>,
> Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de> wrote:
> >
> >On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, Peter Postma wrote:
> >> and this removes that limit. How people are going to use the multiple
> >> devices is beyond the scope of this thread.
> >
> >No, I think it is exactly the question being asked - why would we want
> >this?
> 
> Because it is pointless to have needs-count devices. There are very
> few left (most of them are isdn and ppp/sl related). We can have
> all devices able to have an arbitrary number of instances. For the
> most part you either have allocated too many that you'll never use
> wasting kva, or you've allocated too little and you need to recompile
> a new kernel. The code diffs to do this in most changes save kva!
> Also, in a dynamically loaded driver environment you'd like to
> limit static allocations to a minimum.
> 
> For this particular case I can envision cisco-like "LoopbackN"
> functionality where you create loopback devices to agregate multiple
> physical interfaces, or as a virtual interface with the highest IP
> address of the router, used in protocols that choose the highest
> numbered interface such as OSPF.
> 
> christos
> 

I wouldn't mind bpf being something that you didn't need to specify a
number for - I have, on numerous occasions, built a kernel for a
machine with, say, 3 bpf devices, then later on discovered I need
more.

-- 
Sean