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Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 16:11:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com>
Message-Id: <199606242311.QAA03078@ref.tfs.com>
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Frame relay and ATM support
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk


I'm looking into the support needed in FreeBNSD to support 
ATM and Frame relay services in a generic manner.

mostly this would suggest a file equivalent to if_ethersubr.c
but if_framesubr.c or something, that knows how to 
associate DLCI's (or VPI's) with
addresses, in the same way that ARP does for ethernet,
with a convenient method for controlling such entries.

ET inc. (hi Dennis) seem to associate a virtual interface
with each DLCI in their frame realy product, and this actually
makes some sense, but I rather dislike the idea of intefaces that
don't really associate with the hardware they are running on,
and would RATHER do it in such a way that 
ifconfig -a would return:


fr0: flags=c010<NBMA,MULTICAST> mtu 552
	inet 3.3.3.3 --> 4.4.4.4 netmask 0xff000000 
	inet 3.3.3.3 --> 140.5.5.5 netmask 0xffffff00 
note: that this doesn't work at the moment because
the addition of the alias wipes out the original if the local address
is the same..

(BTW NBMA == non broadcast multiple access)

I bring this up because Iwas hired to write a driver for a frame relay
interface for a proprietary project, and want to make sure that as much of 
what I write can be brought back to FreeBSD as being of general use.

julian

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