3. Networking Updates

With this update, Generic Receive Offload (GRO) support has been implemented in both the kernel and the userspace application, ethtool.((BZ#499347)) The GRO system increases the performance of inbound network connections by reducing the amount of processing done by the Central Processing Unit (CPU). GRO implements the same technique as the Large Receive Offload (LRO) system, but can be applied to a wider range of transport layer protocols. GRO support has also been added to a several network device drivers, including the igb driver for Intel® Gigabit Ethernet Adapters and the ixgbe driver for Intel 10 Gigabit PCI Express network devices.

The Netfilter framework (the portion of the kernel resposible for network packet filtering) has been updated with added support for Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) values

the bind (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) package provides an implementation of the DNS (Domain Name System) protocols. Previously, bind did not offer a mechanism to easily distinguish between requests that will receive authoritative and non-authoritative replies. Consequently, an incorrectly configured server may have replied to requests that should have been denied. With this update, bind has been updated, providing the new option allow-query-cache that controls access to non-authoritative data on a server (for example: cached recursive results and root zone hits). (BZ#483708)