Rishi Srivatsavai writes: > Garrett D'Amore wrote: > > On the one hand, this looks pretty good. On the other hand, I find it > > really unfortunate that we have to create yet another kind of virtual > > interface in addition to etherstubs and VNICs.
Agreed on that point. > > I think many customers > > are going to be left wondering which one of these things they should use > > and why. I don't think they will, because they're supposed to be used for testing purposes. If they're documented at all, they should be documented as intended for testing. > > Is it not possible that we could integrate the functionality (perhaps as > > an additional option) to etherstubs or vnics? (I'm thinking of a kind > > of "attach" or "link" command that might be used to link a pair of > > etherstubs together, for example: dladm link-etherstub etherstub0 > > etherstub1, which could have much the same kind of result, although it > > wouldn't necessarily support the WiFi semantics....) > > It is possible but I personally think it would be more confusing to > introduce simlinks as a new type of etherstub/VNIC. By keeping them > distinct and calling them 'simlinks' should be clear that they are a > testing resource. Another problem is that these things are *NOT* the same in design as etherstubs. Etherstubs aren't regular mac instances. Instead, they're actually created as VNICs, and have no actual I/O (everything just goes through the "virtual switch" used by VNICs). This means that you can't (for instance) put them into aggregations, even if you could some how "link" them together and get the missing data paths to function, for the same reason that you can't aggregate a set of VNICs. At least in theory, one could use simlinks as though they were etherstubs in order to configure a set of communicating VNICs. We're ruling that out as a general for the moment to specify them as "for test purposes only" devices. Perhaps when we have more experience with them, we'll be able to replace the existing etherstubs with simlinks. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <[email protected]> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ networking-discuss mailing list [email protected]
