On Fri, 2006-30-06 at 02:55 +0200, Thomas Graf wrote:

* jamal [off-list ref] 2006-06-29 20:48

The point is to avoid having an atomic operation for every packet
when setting iif in netif_receive_skb(). If it was only for
mirred nobody would complain I guess.

I never intended to punish all users. I think i was misunderstood.
The only problem is where do you decrement the refcount when you
increment at mirred?
In your case, I assume it is at some sort of rule destruction?

quoted

I think whether it becomes ifindex or pointer you need to increment the
refcounter. and decrement somewhere.
The challenge for me is a choice to use more cycles if you use ifindex
vs less cycles with a pointer. The advantage for going with ifindex
would be to save those bits(if you rearrange). The question is which is
reasonable?;->

The third choice is to just don't care if the interface goes away
but have a chance to figure it out and just assume as if it would
have never been set. The number of devices that can disappear w/o
user control is very very limited and not worth an atomic operation
for every single packet.

Now that you mention this - I think that option 3 is what we said last
time we had this discussion ;->

cheers,
jamal