On Friday, 03/14/2003 at 02:29 CST, Alan Schilla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is IPv6 a standard protocol? Should z/VM physical and virtual layers support > standard protocols? Across all guest OS? Where do you draw the line$$$? > Al Schilla
IPv6 is very standard, Al. David's point is that by supporting a lower-layer "physical" tranport protocol that does not depend on the semantics of the higher-level protocols (IP, SNA, IPX, NETBIOS, etc.), then newer protocols such as IPv6 would not require new support from the hardware or VM as long as the guest understands how to construct the frames. While it moves more processing onto the host, it gives value in return. As hardware offload assists become available, the device drivers could use them, but in their absence the driver could always fall back on the underlying primitives. Forward progress in software is not then restricted by limitations in the hardware. It's a powerful idea and it acknowleges that not every application in the universe has been moved to IP. Alan Altmark Sr. Software Engineer IBM z/VM Development
