On Fri, 2012-06-08 at 03:08 +0000, Dave Hart wrote:
networks. With IPv4, ARP presents not only a network capacity issue, but also a host capacity issue as every node expends software resources processing every broadcast ARP. With ND, only a tiny fraction of hosts expend any software capacity processing a given multicast packet, thanks to ethernet NIC's hardware filtering of received multicasts -- with or without multicast-snooping switches.
So we are actually sort of agreeing. That's a relief :-) However, preventing packets getting to the NICs *at all* is a pretty big win, because even if a clever NIC can prevent a host CPU being interrupted, the packet was still wasting bandwidth on the path to the NIC. I would go so far as to say that MLD snooping makes the NIC side of things almost irrelevant. Almost :-) Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (kauer@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer GPG fingerprint: AE1D 4868 6420 AD9A A698 5251 1699 7B78 4EEE 6017 Old fingerprint: DA41 51B1 1481 16E1 F7E2 B2E9 3007 14ED 5736 F687