Several types of switch devices now exist which don't fit well with the existing kernel API's and infrastructure. Examples of these devices are the switches built into: commodity l2 and l3 forwarding devices. enterprise switching and routing platforms; built into 10G and higher speed network interface card; and the software/hardware offload of dataplane being done by Vyatta and Cumulus Networks.

The interested parties have already been discussing how to work with netlink, network device API's to support the necessary management of addresses, routes, firewall and statistics. This discussion needs a wider audience to avoid committing to any API's before they are ready.

The hope is to develop a device model that sufficiently covers all of these classes of hardware, and enables vendors to produce drivers that can be maintained and shipped as part of the linux kernel, and interface with the existing suite of linux administration tools.