Hi all, i was going thru the code of one of the network drivers (8139too.c). In it's open method the driver starts a kernel thread via a call to "kernel_thread" my questoin is why is this thread required??? whenever a user space prog. wud want to send data it can always open the device and then do it's stuff. for reception of packets if the driver is loaded in the memory then it can always service the rx interrupt. TIA - /dev/mandeep -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/