On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 12:08:14 -0800
Ben Greear [off-list ref] wrote:

I was also wondering why we couldn't hold a reference to the net-device
instead of just it's ifindex when dealing with a bound raw socket.

Because then raw sockets could make unloading of netdevices
hang forever.  That is, unless you add some netdev notifier
to af_packet.c that walks all the raw sockets looking for netdev
references.

I guess it also would make things like leaving a dump running
while you quickly down/up and interface stop working.