Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 00:27:56 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "MurrayTaylor" <MurrayTaylor@bytecraftsystems.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: WanIC 405 _IS_ End of Life -- what are the (netgraph) based alternatives?? Message-ID: <000001c1554a$e922d700$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <04a801c1550c$f8af6fa0$2a7627cb@bytecraft.au.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of MurrayTaylor >Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2001 5:05 PM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: WanIC 405 _IS_ End of Life -- what are the (netgraph) based >alternatives?? > > >Hi Ted et al, > >A- thanks for the hint re Ebay. I actually will lookup the >card and manufacturer for more detail for when we are in the >buying mode again. > >B- You should have received the End Of Life mail forwarded from >Alfred Shippen ( our supplier down under ) by now so >you can see where the WanIC 405 stands.... > SBS, not Imagestream, is the manufacturer of the WANic405. What happened is a long time ago SBS signed some kind of deal with Imagestream to where Imagestream took over driver authorship. Previous to that, SBS (actually SDL Communication) supplied drivers for the cards directly. SDL/SBS transferred all of their code over to Imagestream as a part of that deal, and since that time Imagestream has been unwilling to work with the FreeBSD community to write drivers. (I know because R Grimes attempted a number of times to get source to the drivers and Imagestream sent him in a runaround) Before SDL signed the deal with Imagestream, they were free with the programming details for the WANic cards. In fact I have a bunch of documentation I got with an older RIScom card that I have (in service, actually) that explains how to program it, along with a BSD driver skeleton. Since the WANic 400 series used the same programming interface it was a simple matter to mod the driver for the RISCom card to work with the WANic. Undoubtedly the sr driver that John Hay is responsible for originated from this documentation. Since that deal, SDL (now SBS) will not supply driver programming details undoubtedly because Imagestream has them gagged. And Imagestream will not supply programming details nor driver source for their Linux drivers for the higher-order WANic cards, nor will they port it over to FreeBSD. Imagestream was probably the largest reseller of the WANic 400 series cards. So when they stopped selling them, I would guess that most distributors were buying them from Imagestream, and thus were affected. But I know that Rod actually has filled out the paperwork with SBS to be a reseller for them and has (in the past) sold the cards through his company. (without going through the Imagestream loop) I don't know what he's doing nowadays. I also recall that when SDL was still supplying drivers pre-Imagestream, that there were a number of other resellers listed as selling these. A year ago, at my request, the sister VAR of the ISP that I worked for contacted SBS and got the paperwork from them to resell the WANic cards. They ended up never completing it because we found that when people queried SBS for driver support they were referring them to Imagestream, and since everyone asks this question, it was effectively funneling all sales prospects to Imagestream. Also, Imagestream wasn't marking up the WANic 400 cards that much so we decided that it wasn't worth the trouble to bother with it. Perhaps we should revisit this now that Imagestream has made their announcement. >As I am quite happy with Netgraph as it is supporting >multiple frame relay links as well as our MPD based VPN for our >road worriers ( sorry warriors ), I now expand my original question > > >What are the potential netgraph supported replacement cards now and >under consideration, for the WanIC 405 series...?? > I know that Rod Grimes got pissed off enough with this whole WANic400 series/Imagestream driver problem a year ago that he stopped using those cards and switched to something else. He probably builds 5-10 FreeBSD-based T1 routers a year under contract. I don't remember what he told me that he switched to, though. He was using Netgraph with the 405 before he switched. I still use the SBS cards, and I have a small stash of the 405's that I will continue to use as spares. Also, if there's demand for these I think that my associates would probably start selling them. There's also probably still a number of resellers out there that can still sell these directly from SBS you would just need to get their names and give them the right part numbers for their computers. >The new (read more expensive) card is the WanIC 520/521/.... series, >but I am willing to look at alternates that provide the interface >to the telco NTU for frame relay. > >(Just as an aside, given the unique nature of the card and the >us - au exchange rate, we are already paying AU$2000 ish prices for card and >interface cable package, so a cheaper alternate is always welcome ;-) > As has been pointed out in this forum, a much cheaper alternative is to use a Cisco or other router, and connect that to the FreeBSD system. It's difficult to do this when your running BGP because the external peers must be a single hop away, you cannot have an intermediate router (normally) in between. While bringing the interface into the PC has certain technical advantages in theory, as Matt pointed out, it takes a bit of tweaking to get it to work right. Also it's definitely non-standard so larger organizations aren't going to want to do this. This is one area where FreeBSD could stand to get a lot of work done. Not in the netgraph code (although that needs it) but there's few WAN cards supported under FreeBSD. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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