Re: [RFC PATCH 32/33] Add the Xen virtual network device driver.

From: John Haller
Date: Tue Jul 18 2006 - 09:29:36 EST


Herbert Xu wrote:
jamal <hadi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I dont think the ifup/ifconfig provide operational status (i.e link
up/down) - or do they? If they can be made to invoke scripts in such
a case then we are set.

In fact, that's a very good reason why this shouldn't be in netfront.
Indeed, it shouldn't be in the guest at all. The reason is that the
guest has no idea whether the physical carrier is present.

It's much better for the host to send the ARP packet on behalf of the
guest since the host knows the carrier status and the guest's MAC
address.
But sending ARPs is not the right thing if the guest is expecting
to use IPv6 networking, in which case unsolicited neighbor
advertisements are the right thing to do. The driver just
doesn't seem to be the right place to do this, as it doesn't/
shouldn't need to know the difference between IPv4/IPv6.
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