Herbert Xu wrote: > jamal <hadi at cyberus.ca> wrote: >> I dont think the ifup/ifconfig provide operational status (i.e link >> up/down) - or do they? If they can be made to invoke scripts in such >> a case then we are set. > > In fact, that's a very good reason why this shouldn't be in netfront. > Indeed, it shouldn't be in the guest at all. The reason is that the > guest has no idea whether the physical carrier is present. > > It's much better for the host to send the ARP packet on behalf of the > guest since the host knows the carrier status and the guest's MAC > address. But sending ARPs is not the right thing if the guest is expecting to use IPv6 networking, in which case unsolicited neighbor advertisements are the right thing to do. The driver just doesn't seem to be the right place to do this, as it doesn't/ shouldn't need to know the difference between IPv4/IPv6.
