TCP/IP Offload Engine

[Hank]

I was just educating myself on the issues and I just posted what I thought
was an awkward, biased tone for an otherwise excellent article.

For the record, I am not on either side, and I don't have opinions either
way.. I certainly wasn't intending to start any sort of argument or flame
war for OR against TOE.  All I said in my original post was "it's a little
biased".  I didn't realize you guys were so damn touchy on the subject, or I
wouldn't have said anything.  Lighten up a little bit!  I meant no harm.  I
wasn't disputing the article, just the tone and slant.

-Hank



On 5/3/07, Michael E Brown <Michael_E_Brown at dell.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 01:01:53PM -0400, Hank wrote:
> > I felt it was slanted due to biased comments like:
>
> Ok, my Dell hat is off. Standard disclaimers apply.
>
> After reading that page, I see that it is *remarkably* unbiased, when
> compared to the absolute flamage I've seen on linux-{net,kernel}.
>
> > "In order to configure a TOE NIC, hardware-specific tools are usually
> > required. This dramatically increases support costs. "
> >
> > Instead of something more balanced like "This may increase support
> costs"
> > especially when they just said "tools are *usually* required"... or just
> > drop the "dramatically".   For instance, if I have a room full of the
> same
> > TOE NICs, and I use the same (vendor/hardware specific) tool to
> configure
> > them (instead of linux tools), where's the "dramatically increased
> support
> > costs"?  Nothing like a good old over generalization to get a point
> across.
>
> So, instead of training your support personel to 'edit
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX' to configure network, they
> have to 1) is this a TOE system 2) if TOE, run vendor scripts, 3) forget
> about "features X/Y/Z" because they arent supported on TOE. (packet
> filtering/scheduling, etc)
>
> Also, I assume you just bought your room full of servers and intend to
> never buy another one ever again? Because three years later when you go
> to upgrade your systems, that old TOE nic? Right, it isnt available
> anymore. You have to upgrade to the newer one. Oh, and guess what? Yup,
> it has a new configuration utility.
>
> > ..or the statement "refer users to the vendor -- who in all likelihood
> cares
> > more about non-Linux operating systems".. is also a very biased
> > statement/conjecture/opinion.
>
> Biased? Coming from a group of folks who have had to forcibly reverse
> engineer whole families of network chips because the vendors refused to
> release specs? (*cough*Broadcom*cough*) I'll go with the open source
> guys on this one...
>
> Broadcom now supports the TG3 driver for their wired gig-e stuff. This
> is only because it was forced down their throats. They originally wrote
> the bcm57xx driver, and only after having the open source guys eat their
> lunch with the open source driver (faster, lower overhead, better
> all-around performance) and having massive user (and OEM) backlash did
> they decide to switch to TG3.
>
> > And one more: "Supporting TOE requires *massive*, heavily invasive hooks
> > into the network stack.".   It's just a little too dramatic of a comment
> > there.  We get it.
>
> Not dramatic if it is true. Have you actually seen some of the proposed
> vendor patches to support TOE? They basically let any vendor say "Here
> is a binary-only blob I need you to load if you want to use our latest
> nic. Oh, by the way, it completely replaces the entire Linux network
> stack."
>
> >
> > It's clear that whoever wrote it had an axe to grind against TOE.
>
> Or... it is clear that the people who wrote it are some of the primary
> developers of the Linux kernel network stack and *know* *what* *they*
> *are* *talking* *about*. Most of the information on that page was taken
> directly from the primary authors of the Linux network stack from
> mailing list discussions.
>
> There are better ways to make the network go faster, and these have been
> discussed on the linux-net mailing lists. TOE is a workaround to fix the
> problems in one specific OS's slow network stack and is not a
> generalized solution.
> --
> Michael
> (not speaking for Dell)
>
>
> >
> > -Hank
> >
> >
> > On 5/3/07, Kuba Ober <kuba at mareimbrium.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >On Thursday 03 May 2007, Hank wrote:
> > >> Here's good (but somewhat slanted) discussion why TOE is not
> supported
> > >on
> > >> Linux:
> > >>
> > >> http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/TOE
> > >
> > >It's pretty much dead-on. I can't say it's slanted.
>
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