Re: Frame Relay generic driver

Jan Kasprzak (kas@informatics.muni.cz)
Sun, 4 Jul 1999 17:05:03 +0200


Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
: Jan Kasprzak <kas@informatics.muni.cz> writes:
:
: > did you make any progress with it?
:
: Not in the real code yet. I have the docs now, and the task seems to be
: not very hard to write. In fact, integrating FR with the rest of kernel
: _the_right_way_ seems to be harder.

Yep.

: I think syncppp.c should be rewritten a little. Then there would be a place
: for one master device (used for PPP/Cisco/LMI interface), and for slaves
: for each PVC.

I think it is possible even without a rewrite of syncppp.c. The
slaves should be generated on the fly using some ioctl (which gets
a PVC #, and returns the slave name, for example). And of course some
ioctl for deleting the slave, and one for seting a link-protocol
(maybe we should delete SPPPIOCCISCO and SPPPIOCPPP and make one
ioctl with a parameter for setting the link-level protocol).

: I have a month of free time now, so I expect to have it done, after all
: design issues are resolved.

I am ready to help you with the design, testing and maybe some
coding (not much, because I don't have lots of free time, but some).
I can even provide space at the linux.cz listserver for a
mailing list, and the CVS at cvs.linux.cz.

: One of them: moving all sync drivers from net to char devices (they are
: serial ports as async ones), and adding ppp/fr/cisco/whatever drivers
: the same way as async SLIP and PPP. Of course, we should use frame-
: oriented interface there. That would simplify hardware drivers, and there
: would be consistent interface to all sync network devices (common names,
: etc). We shouldn't lose performance that way.

Well, I think it is a marginal issue. The syncppp.c can be
modified for character device even after the FR is written. I even
thought about going opposite way: to add the character device as one
of the link protocols. Using this, the task queues, etc will be
at one place for all sync drivers.

I would like to focus on writing the FR layer for syncppp.c first.

-Yenya

-- 
\ Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak <kas at fi.muni.cz>       http://www.fi.muni.cz/~kas/
\\ PGP: finger kas at aisa.fi.muni.cz   0D99A7FB206605D7 8B35FCDE05B18A5E //
\\\             Czech Linux Homepage:  http://www.linux.cz/              ///
The new code base has not stabilized enough yet for benchmarking. Be patient,
we'll be sure to delay NT5's release a bit, trust me...              (DaveM)

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