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    SubjectRe: Synchronous board drivers
    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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