Re: RDMA over TCP (Was Re: VI (Was: Avoiding deadlock in iSCSI))

[Matt Wakeley <matt_wakeley@agilent.com>]

Stephen Bailey wrote:

> > I believe the point in factoring out the RDMA mechanism from iSCSI is to
> > make the same hardware assists available to other application
> > protocols.
>
> I agree.
>
> The motivation is primarily economic.  If you implement a general
> solution to 1) data steering, 2) congestion avoidance, 3) security,
> you own the edge of all networking.

great - go off and work on this in the TCP working group, and when it's done, iSCSI should
seamlessly work on top of it, just like FTP, CIFS, HTTP and all other protocols that run
over TCP should.

-Matt

>  If you implement these for
> storage, you only own storage.
>
> Given that it seems such an easy step to make the hardware slightly
> more general and own the world, I'm stumped on why not.  OK, I admit I
> know the argument why not, because people think the more specific
> solution more tractable.  I disagree.  The other reason why not is
> some people really aren't sold on the necessity for hardware
> implementation at all.
>
> BTW, I made this case at CERN recently:
>   http://hsi.web.cern.ch/HSI/HNF-Europe/Workshop%202000/Presentations/Com_Stor_Net.PDF
>
> Julo wasn't buying though.
>
> Steph