From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 15 16:12:52 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86DFF16A4CE for ; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:12:52 +0000 (GMT) Received: from info6.lancs.ac.uk (info6.lancs.ac.uk [148.88.156.24]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3DBDE43D2D for ; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:12:51 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from m.sifalakis@lancaster.ac.uk) Received: from [194.80.39.66] (dynhost66.v6testbed.net [194.80.39.66]) (authenticated) by info6.lancs.ac.uk (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i6FGCQ622732; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 17:12:26 +0100 Message-ID: <40F6AD01.8080303@lancaster.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 17:12:49 +0100 From: "Sifalakis, Manolis" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 (Windows/20040616) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:34:55 +0000 Subject: Communication driver framework? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:12:52 -0000 Hello all, I am new to the list as well as "under the FreeBSD-hood" and this is my first posting so pls forgive me if this has been asked 1000 times before (I did not manage to find it in the archive). We re planning to implement a programmable router framework for FreeBSD, and basically we need to have a piece of code between the NIC driver(s) and the protocol stack to pull out and push (back) in the forwarding path network packets (and possibly do some low level routing among the NIC interfaces there). As a result I would like to ask if there is a communications driver framework similar to NDIS -bleah- (in M$ Win) or STREAMS (in the -early- ATT unix flavors), in FreeBSD. It would be significantly more efficient and portable if we did not have to hard code in the kernel our "intermediate" driver. Thanks in advance for reading ... even more for replying ;) -- Manolis.