Re: [PATCH, untested] Support for PPPOE on SMP

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michal Ostrowski writes:

> Paul:  you made an assertion to me in an eariler e-mail that you were
> concerned about packet ordering for the sake of vj and compression. 
> IIRC the PPPoE spec prohibits compression, probably for this very
> reason. Is there any other reason we'd be worried about re-ordering in
> the PPP data stream?

Reordering would stop you doing multilink, for instance.  Generally,
PPP protocols assume ordering where it is helpful since most
point-to-point links don't reorder packets.  IMO the PPPoE protocol
itself should have included a sequence number, but we can't change
what's deployed.

James might be able to comment better than me on what will happen if
packets get reordered during the negotiation phase of a PPP
connection.  I think the worst is that some packets will have to be
retransmitted and thus the negotiation will take several seconds
longer than it needs to.

Paul.