Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 05 Jul 1999 19:02:27 -0500 | From | Paul Fulghum <> | Subject | Re: Synchronous board drivers |
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Alan Cox wrote: > > If you have a smart firmware-driven PPP board, then wouldn't it be > > doing the ppp negotiation itself, thus removing the need for pppd and > > the kernel ppp driver? Wouldn't it look much more like an ethernet > > Yes. However two things apply here that are important > > 1. It may do PPP, but if I flip it to X.25 it may not do X.25, so the > board itself needs a control of how it hands packets around. > 2. I may want to be able to add a board specific ioctl to pick hardware > (low cpu overhead) v software (multilink, cool feature set) PPP
Wouldn't the 'smart mode' (firmware ppp implementation) operate outside the scope of a generic sync board or ppp channel interface?
The driver for such a board could offer both an ethernet emulation (smart mode) interface (eliminating the need for pppd/ppp.o) *and* a generic sync/channel (sw mode) interface. Instead of ioctl in the generic i/f to switch between the two, the driver would create two devices for each physical port (similar to the normal and call out devices for a serial port). Open the ethernet emulation device and get smart mode. Open the generic sync device and get a generic interface that allows sending of any kind of synchronous frames (x.25, ppp, etc).
It does not make any sense to me to combine a higher level interface (network/LAN emulation) for PPP/Frame Relay or whatever, with the lower level generic sync interface.
-- Paul Fulghum paulkf@austin.rr.com "what kind of party is this? there's no booze and only one hooker..." - Bender
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