Polling or Interrupt based method

Question

When should one use polling method and when should one use interrupt based method ? Are there scenarios in which both can be used ?

Answer 1

Sometimes you actually need to use both. For example if the events are sporadic but come in a high speed burst; you may need to first respond to an interrupt, and then before re-enabling the interrupt poll to see if another event has already occurred avoiding some of the overhead of the interrupt context switching. I believe Linux Network Interface operates in this mode.