Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 14:54:55 -0600 From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> To: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@flugsvamp.com> Cc: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.freebsd.org>, Alex Rousskov <rousskov@measurement-factory.com>, freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: funding TCP stack rewrite Message-ID: <20011130145455.K46769@elvis.mu.org> In-Reply-To: <20011130143707.E75389@prism.flugsvamp.com>; from jlemon@flugsvamp.com on Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 02:37:07PM -0600 References: <rousskov@measurement-factory.com> <2047.1007150960@winston.freebsd.org> <20011130143707.E75389@prism.flugsvamp.com>
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* Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@flugsvamp.com> [011130 14:40] wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 12:09:20PM -0800, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
> > > Will the dedicated work of the said guru get a high priority as far as
> > > review and commit steps are concerned? A public semi-formal commitment
> > > or encouragement from FreeBSD core group may be in order to raise
> > > support from the community. Otherwise, folks may worry that these big
> > > changes, once implemented, will get stuck in the commit queue forever.
> >
> > I think it's an absolutely terrible idea, frankly.
>
> [ sweeping generalizations omitted ]
>
> An open ended request of "rewrite the stack!" is certainly bound to
> fail. However, a carefully targeted one to add specific, well-defined
> features within a fixed timeline is quite feasible, depending on the
> the engineers involved.
I don't think a rewrite is ever going to be much of a good idea,
a restructuring might, meaning that fixing up all the layering
and making it more flat like Van Jacobson suggested (and Linux
implemented in one of their stack of the year projects) might
gain us performance.
A rewrite is only necessary when you can't solve a particular
semantic or performance problem without a major kludge. Right
now we don't have any of those problems and a rewrite would
mearly throw away years apon years of testing along with making
our implementation incompatible with the texts out there which
would raise the bar for anyone attempting to base their code on
ours.
I agree that a rewrite without a clearly stated goal is almost always
just a euphamism for "i didn't like the variable names and indenting
of the old system" or "i want my name on the top of each file in
the sys/netinet directory".
Lastly, I wish we just drop it until we come up with a solid reason,
all this is doing is second guessing stuff that has worked for
years. This code has existed in mostly working order for half of
my lifetime I really don't feel much anyone has the skills necessary
to duplicate the equivelant of several hundered man years of
developement in just a couple of months no matter how highly they
think of themselves.
In summary, I completely agree with Jonathan and all the others
opposing such a motion. Your time would be much better spent
analyzing the current issues and seeking optimizations to completment
the current design.
--
-Alfred Perlstein [alfred@freebsd.org]
'Instead of asking why a piece of software is using "1970s technology,"
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom.'
http://www.morons.org/rants/gpl-harmful.php3
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