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Message-ID: <20090605192933.GH2014@woodchuck>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 20:29:34 +0100
From: Alexander Clouter <alex@...riz.org.uk>
To: david@...g.hm
Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, sefi@...-f-i.de
Subject: Re: When does Linux drop UDP packets?
Hi,
* david@...g.hm <david@...g.hm> [2009-06-05 12:15:27-0700]:
>
> On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Alexander Clouter wrote:
>
> > * david@...g.hm <david@...g.hm> [2009-06-04 16:19:56-0700]:
> > >
> > > On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Alexander Clouter wrote:
> > > >
> > > > It's dead easy to transmit and receive multicast traffic, broadcasting
> > > > network traffic is so 1980's :)
> > >
> > > there is only a difference between multicast and broadcast traffic if you
> > > are spanning subnets.
> > >
> > Well yes and no. Broadcast traffic is *always* handled by the kernel as
> > only the kernel can tell if it is interested in it or not. With
> > multicast the NIC is configured to only pass particular
> > Ethernet multicast packets up to the kernel.
> >
> > By using broadcast traffic the load (okay, hardly a big problem
> > now-a-days) hits *all* the workstations on the subnet, with multicast,
> > only those interested in the traffic receive it.
>
> true, but only for some NICs, and even those tend to have a fairly small
> number of slots for the filters. past these limits the OS handles it all
> just like broadcasts.
>
I *think* only the early ones have a naff non-hashing based to filter
multicast flows, could be wrong though.
Either way, as a packet pusher by day, I dream of the venduh's
discovering that multicast can be used for device discovery rather than
expecting everything to be on the same subnet :-/
In this day and age, using broadcast to do a job is just plain lazy and
braindead.
Cheers
--
Alexander Clouter
.sigmonster says: Misuse may cause suffocation.
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