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Date:      Sun, 13 Jan 2002 12:54:21 -0800
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Michal Mertl <mime@traveller.cz>
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 64 bit counters again
Message-ID:  <3C41F3FD.4ECC8CD@mindspring.com>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.41.0201132057560.62182-100000@prg.traveller.cz>

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Michal Mertl wrote:
> But anyway I continued on some work on STABLE (but believe lot of my work
> could be used on CURRENT after some modification) and get kernel and world
> building with 64 bit counters on network interfaces (struct if_data)
> and in protocols (struct ipstat, tcpstat, udpstat, icmpstat, igmpstat).

Not to discount the value of this work, but...

1)	It makes counting slower on 32 bit processors.

2)	The values are not accessible from SNMP, which is
	limited to 32 bit counters.

3)	While you could export these values as strings and
	not numbers over SNMP, doing this would mean you
	would need to use a MIB which was not a superset
	of an RFC'ed MIB.

So it seems to me that the utility of this on 32 bit machines
is incredibly limited (e.g. shell programs).

PS:	FWIW, I agree that these things should be 64 bits on
	64 bit architectures, even if they can only export
	the low 32 bits for SNMP.

-- Terry

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