The only spot I think you and I disagreed on was the approach.  I
don't know if the hard push back does anything but punish the users by
delaying the time needed to find a reasonable solution.  I really
think if we are going to get the hardware vendors to change their
behavior we have to create a market demand for it.  Having a bit of
marketable data showing the folly of this approach versus the 1's
compliment checksum would probably do more to encourage and/or shame
them into it than simply pushing for this based on engineering
opinion.

I don't know what "marketable data" means. But I do know that we're
like 70 postings into this thread, into the third patch set regarding
this, yet nobody has bothered to contribute any data on what these
patches do and what the quantifiable benefits are with HW offload of
these protocols. I would test this stuff myself, but I don't have
access to any NICs with necessary support. If someone else can start
testing and providing meaningful data it would be most helpful...