From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Nov 13 22:26:48 1995
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To: Peter Wemm <peter@jhome.dialix.com>
cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: if_mux hack? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 14 Nov 95 05:28:43 +0800."
             <Pine.BSF.3.91.951114051809.243F-100000@jhome.DIALix.COM> 
From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
Reply-To: davidg@Root.COM
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 22:21:01 -0800
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
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>Create a stub if_mux that only accepts packets from IP, and 
>redistributes them to other interfaces that it's been told about below 
>it.  Ie: it's if_output routine would take the packets and distribute 
>them to other interface's if_output routines below it.
>
>Incoming packets from the lower interfaces would still go direct to IP, 
>but that's no big deal.
...
>Sound interesting?  Is it a "worthy hack"?  (especially since Linux has 
>something like it.. :-)

   I thought of doing this exact thing about 3 years ago. It was more work
than I was willing to do at the time so I never got around to doing it. The
mechanics of the load balancing are trivial; the difficulty comes from the
little nits - like writing the utility to manage the list of "multiplexed"
interfaces, etc..
   I definately think it is worthwhile.

-DG