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SubjectRe: Today Linus redesigns the networking driver interface (was Re: tulip driver in ...)

On Sat, 19 Sep 1998, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> Right now I don't see this as a problem in real life. It may become one,
> although I doubt it. It tends to be a lot easier to upgrade machines
> than to upgrade networks, and I'm not very worried about
> denial-of-service attacks on internal networks (if you give access to
> your internal gigabit network to people who want to do bad things you
> have mostly yourself to blame). As such, I think people are just making
> a big thing out of nothing.

it's not only about intentional 'bad things', but also about accidental
peak load due to malfunctioning hardware or simple software (or
administration) errors. Eg. recently there was a major AT&T network
breakdown, because some of the hardware components started flooding the
(gigabit order) network with small packets (which caused other components
to respond in an exponential way). Such stuff happens frequently. We do
not want Linux to die in those cases. We do not want it to perform well,
but we do not want it to die either. I think it's simply unexcusable for
Linux to allow _any_ kind of D.O.S. attack through an uncontrollable
external interface. Also, a considerable percent of all Linux boxes _have_
underpowered CPUs, and _must_ survive being underpowered, because that
might be the only reason they run Linux.

-- mingo


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