[openib-general] Hello and a basic question

Wed Oct 20 16:11:06 PDT 2004

    Mark> Why is IP-over-IB named IP-over-IB?  From what I can
    Mark> understand, this is really a software layer, that connects
    Mark> the protocol layer (IP and ARP) to the IB device driver.
    Mark> So, it should be called something like Protocol-to-IB, not
    Mark> IP-over-IB.

I think the name IP-over-IB is used by the IETF working group because
what they are specifying is an encapsulation to be used to carry IP
packets (both IPv4 and IPv6) over InfiniBand.  In addition, an
encapsulation is given for ARP packets, but IP&ARP-over-IB is too
cumbersome a name.  You can think of the current IP-over-IB drafts as
being analogous to RFC 894 et al ("Standard for the transmission of IP
datagrams over Ethernet networks").

The name for the kernel driver carries over from the name of the
encapsulation -- we have a driver that talks IP-over-IB.  This is
analogous to eg. the naming of the kernel "clip" driver, which does
classical IP over ATM.

 - Roland