Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759100AbYBEAqc (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:46:32 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757567AbYBEAqX (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:46:23 -0500 Received: from waste.org ([66.93.16.53]:57753 "EHLO waste.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756643AbYBEAqW (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:46:22 -0500 Subject: Re: Integration of SCST in the mainstream Linux kernel From: Matt Mackall To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Alan Cox , "Nicholas A. Bellinger" , James Bottomley , Vladislav Bolkhovitin , Bart Van Assche , Andrew Morton , FUJITA Tomonori , linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, scst-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Linux Kernel Mailing List , Mike Christie In-Reply-To: References: <1201639331.3069.58.camel@localhost.localdomain> <47A05CBD.5050803@vlnb.net> <47A7049A.9000105@vlnb.net> <1202139015.3096.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> <47A73C86.3060604@vlnb.net> <1202144767.3096.38.camel@localhost.localdomain> <47A7488B.4080000@vlnb.net> <1202145901.3096.49.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1202151989.11265.576.camel@haakon2.linux-iscsi.org> <20080204224314.113afe7b@core> <1202170060.17934.142.camel@cinder.waste.org> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:45:14 -0600 Message-Id: <1202172314.17934.161.camel@cinder.waste.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.12.3 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1451 Lines: 38 On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 16:24 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Matt Mackall wrote: > > > > But ATAoE is boring because it's not IP. Which means no routing, > > firewalls, tunnels, congestion control, etc. > > The thing is, that's often an advantage. Not just for performance. > > > NBD and iSCSI (for all its hideous growths) can take advantage of these > > things. > > .. and all this could equally well be done by a simple bridging protocol > (completely independently of any AoE code). > > The thing is, iSCSI does things at the wrong level. It *forces* people to > use the complex protocols, when it's a known that a lot of people don't > want it. I frankly think NBD is at a pretty comfortable level. It's internally very simple (and hardware-agnostic). And moderately easy to do in silicon. But I'm not going to defend iSCSI. I worked on the first implementation (what became the Cisco iSCSI driver) and I have no love for iSCSI at all. It should have been (and started out as) a nearly trivial encapsulation of SCSI over TCP much like ATA over Ethernet but quickly lost the plot when committees got ahold of it. -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/