[Ns-developers] NS-3 promiscuous mode for NetDevice

[Mathieu Lacage]

On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 08:50 -0700, Tom Henderson wrote:

> In this case, I was surprised to look at Gustavo's code and see the 
> bridge functionality implemented within a special bridge device
> rather 
> than on top of our usual devices.  Could we instead implement
> bridging 
> as a function on top of existing devices, and would that avoid the
> need 
> to break current API?

You could do that but it would not help you avoid API breakage. You need
the devices to:
  - allow you to specify a from address when you send a packet
  - allow you to get the to address when you receive a packet
  - allow you to put them into promisc mode

All of which can be done without breaking the existing API and by adding
new API, but all of which would be much cleaner if we simply extended
the existing API.

> I also think that while we are on this exercise, it would be helpful
> to 
> architecturally plan for how we are going to deal with adding VLANs
> and 
> MPLS.

I would be fine with doing that but I don't want to hold gustavo's very
useful work until someone figures out what the requirements for MPLS and
VLANs are. i.e., if someone can spell out the requirements, we can
figure out a solution but, I fear that getting the requirements will
take serious time.

Mathieu