Subject: [RFC:] struct net_device_ops: Add function pointer to fill device specific ndisc information

From: Stephan Gatzka <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:52:36 +0100

I've implemented IPv6 over firewire. Right now I'm facing the problem 
that the corresponding RFC3146 requires very firewire specific 
information sent during neighborhood discovery.

There was already a discussion on the linux1394 mailing list 
(http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=30342089 and 
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=50E4A3E5.8080304%40gmail.com&forum_name=linux1394-devel) 

During that discussion all participants agreed that it makes no sense to 
introduce a dependency between the ndisc code and the firewire net driver.

So the most appealing option seems to be to introduce on more callback 
routine either in struct net_device or struct net_device_ops:

int (*ndo_fill_llao)(void *llao);

Because I'm not so familiar with the structure of the whole network 
infrastructure in Linux, I need some advice if struct net_device or 
struct net_device_ops is the right place.

Maybe it's worth to generalize this and do the same for IPv4/ARP because 
right now the ARP packets are mangled in the firewire net driver.

Nevertheless, I've to admit that right now it seems that only IPv6 over 
firewire requires such a callback routine.

Regards,

Stephan