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Date:      Wed, 11 Oct 1995 18:47:27 -0400
From:      dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
To:        Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: IPX
Message-ID:  <199510112247.SAA04475@etinc.com>

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>> 
>> > yes please!
>> >and I'd like to know whether this fits in with what dennis was saying
they had
>> >there..
>> >dennis?
>> >
>> It doesn't seem likely that there would be much inter-operability. Our
>> router product is 
>> embedded in our kernel driver and does RIP and SAP in the kernel (no
>> daemons). There is an internal
>> routing table and separate utilities (we haven't hacked any FreeBSD stuff)
>> that can be used
>> to display and manage the tables. We use a simple filter (about 3 lines of
>> code have to be added
>> to any ethernet driver) that passes packets to our driver. Its designed to
>> be an autonomous system, 
>
>wouldn't it be a better idea to put the changes in if_ethersubr.c
>in ether_output and ether_input
>rather than have each driver be changed?
>

This would be correct method if you were truly integrating IPX into the
operating system. We did it in the ethernet driver for  a few reasons:

- BSDI won't let us provide modified source or even an example to object
customers, so we can just use a special precompiled object driver that has
been modified and we can call it something different.
- We wanted to make it as simple as possible. We really just "steal" packets
from the driver

if (ipx_filter()){
        m_freem();
        return;
}
ether_input();

The whole idea was to make the whole system autonomous so that it could be
ported easily, and would not interfere with changes that may be made in the os.

db
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerging Technologies, Inc.      http://www.etinc.com

Synchronous Communications Cards and Routers For
Discriminating Tastes. 56k to T1 and beyond. Frame
Relay, PPP, HDLC, and X.25




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