On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 15:51:34 +0200
Jari Arkko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mark Smith wrote:
>
> >Do you have examples of such hardware / chipsets ? I'd think it'd have
> >to be really, really old not to have basic multicast and promiscous
> >capabilities. I'd wonder about the value of introducing layer 2
> >broadcasts into IPv6 just to cater for such old and rare hardware.
> >
> >
> I tend to agree. We need a reality check here. If the problem
> is with Ethernet cards from '92 then there is no point in worrying
> about this. People who care about new stuff already use newer
> hardware, or will get new hardware if they run into a problem. In
> fact, if you use stuff from '92 I wouldn't be surprised if you had
> lots of other problems too, like lack of drivers for modern OSes,
> incompatibility with current physical bus and interface connections,
> etc.
>
(Heh, my mate's old 80486DX66 with 20MB of RAM that he lent me runs the
latest Linux kernels with a 1992 WD8013 ethernet NIC, and it's running
IPv6 fine :-) )
> On the other hand, if the problem is in bad drivers (as Bill points
> out), this may be a different issue. I guess part of the problem is
> that for plain old IPv4 usage multicast features in NICs and the
> drivers don't get tested well, so you see problems when you
> switch to IPv6 or other things that depend on multicast capabilities.
> Is there any way to determine how widespread this problem is?
> Personally, I have never seen it. But YMMV.
>
As Martin Dunmore suggested -
"Perhaps it would be simpler just to add some text saying that Ethernet NICs
that do not support 33 multicast may not (cannot?) be able to support v6?"
might be a good way to cover this situation. I'd think it would also
provide an incentive for bad drivers to be fixed.
Regards,
Mark.
--
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