two NICs -- channel bonding -- tradeoff

[Walter B. Ligon III]

--------
> Someone asked:
> > I wonder if anyone know if the "out of band" feature of TCP/IP (or is
> > it UDP/IP?) actually gives priority to packets at the network device
> > queue, or if it simply provides a seperate buffer for the socket?  One
> > idea would be for the kernel to automatically route "out of band" data
> > via a different device.
> 
> The "out of band" feature is a feature of the BSD socket interface.  On
> TCP it translates into "urgent data", which is just data in the normal
> data stream with an 'urgent pointer' pointing to it.
> 
> Accordingly, 'out of band' data cannot usefully be routed through a
> different device, because it will not be received until all previous
> packets on the same TCP connection are received.
> 
> You could use a different TCP connection (with different IP QoS flags)
> though.
> 

Right.  So it sounds like one implementation of that socket feature over
TCP/IP does not actually give priority to that data.  So the one idea is
to implement a mechanism that does.

Anyway, I don't know if it would really be worth it - depends on what
applications could do with it.  But it IS an idea.

Walt
-- 
Dr. Walter B. Ligon III
Associate Professor
ECE Department
Clemson University