Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 20:57:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu> To: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se> Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ISDN code removal, final warning. Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.95.961020205108.11473A-100000@thurston.eng.umd.edu> In-Reply-To: <199610210016.CAA11690@ocean.campus.luth.se>
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On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Mikael Karpberg wrote: [CC: list trimmed out] > According to Julian Elischer: > > > As an ISDN user I have the same reservations as Poul-Henning, I'm > > > not sure ISDN belongs in the kernel... > > > > > Oh I think it does, and I expect to be asked to start working on it > > soonish. > > How about this? > It doesn't belong there. Neither does IP, or most drivers. IMHO. > It seems to me Linux is going the right way, trying to split up their > kernel, making it more modular, having it load stuff like drivers as it is > needed. Or am I missinformed? (Could very well be the case here...) FreeBSD has LKMs. > > Streams should be wonderful, no? So you could just plug a new protocol in, > and run it over any connection, and plug a new communication hardware in, > and write a driver to just handle that, without worring about protocol. > Plug it in and run any protocol supported allready. Way I understand it, streams is a performance dog, especially when used for network stuff, with very high throughput. Why take a system that is a known high performer and start recoding it to look like a known underperformer? Streams makes all the characters go from level to level to level, which might be ok for tty processing perhaps, but not past there. > > I have no idea what kind of efforts are going on to get streams in, > or make the kernel dynamically load device drivers, or such... > > Is there an effort? Is it something that FreeBSD as a community wants? > Should be... easier for people to contribute if they just have to figure > out how to make a connection from hardware to an API, rather then > having to know half the kernel, and go messing about in it to get things > to work. I don't know how much of which case we have today, I'm affraid. > > A friend and I pondered writing an NDIS 3.1 API, in form of a network > driver, which would load drivers from /drv/ndis/ or something. > That way, we could get INSTANT support for the cutting edge network > hardware that comes out, since it WILL come with an NDIS driver to > support win95. Just "mcopy a:thefile.drv /drv/ndis/" (possibly with a > command like "newndis thefile.drv" to initialize it's use) and reboot > the system, and you can try the thing while it's still so hot out of > the development, you'll burn yourself touching it. And to be able to do > it in your favourite OS, instead of win95! :) In adition to that, there > are, we found, quite a few fun things out there... Like a ppp-driver > which uses ndis, from Micro$oft. I don't know how it worked really, but > possibly you could just plug it in like any network ndis driver, and > use it like it was any network card. I found it interesting. Also > making NDIS support a network driver would allow you to compile with > or without it as you pleased. If it's possible. Then your card would just > show up as ndis0, ndis1, etc, regardless of it's a ppp driver for modem, > or an ethernet card, or whatever. Hmm... > > We haven't seriously researched this, so I could be completely wrong. > I just thought I'd share some ideas, see if anyone was working on any > of them, and/or found inspiration in them. Maybe someone just have > a comment that could be useful, if not for me, then maybe for someone > else. I like the idea of increasing performance, but I don't like the idea of mimicing the competition. FreeBSD is great in it's own right, but if it became just another Windows, would *you* be interested in it? > > So... comments? :) *duck* > > /Mikael > > > > ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 9120 Edmonston Ct #302 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and n3lxx, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 2.2 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
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