From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Nov 29 10:21:53 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from InterJet.elischer.org (c421509-a.pinol1.sfba.home.com [24.7.86.9]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1E68237B417; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 10:21:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost.elischer.org [127.0.0.1]) by InterJet.elischer.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA20742; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 10:15:28 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 10:15:27 -0800 (PST) From: Julian Elischer To: Nyteckjobs@aol.com Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, tedm@toybox.placo.com Subject: Re: (no subject) In-Reply-To: <14e.4d05ff7.29371325@aol.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 Nyteckjobs@aol.com wrote: > >As I mentioned above, we CAN license the driver code and the DDK for > >development. This means that you could produce FreeBSD drivers which we > >could then distribute in a binary form under a free end-user license. > > > > >Frankly this is the only way I can see that FreeBSD drivers for the 5xx > >series would ever come about. Porting SAND over, while having >advantages > >of long term support, is just overkill for this, besides which it's unlikely > >you will get a FreeBSD developer to work on GPL code. > > >This would end up putting a WANic 5xx driver into the same status as the > >drivers for the Emerging Technologies, or Sangoma sync cards, which both > >come > >with binary-only FreeBSD drivers. It would actually have a leg up over > >those drivers because it would have Netgraph hooks and I believe that the > >Sangoma drivers don't (but I've never worked with the Sangoma cards so I > >don't know for certain) > > The concept that "netgraph hooks" are a "leg up" on say, ETs drivers that > have integrated bandwidth management and prioritization, WAN bridging > support, load balancing and a probably 25% performance advantage is a bit > entertaining. Unless you need to do some convoluted encapsulation netgraph > is, aside from being appallingly non-standard to anything else in the market, > not much of an "advantage", and its a poster child for the trade off of > "flexibility" versus performance. Netgraph is a prototyping tool, which has enough performance to be useful in non-performance-critical applications. (such as all sync interfaces). It is not designed for gigabit interfaces etc. > > Lets face it. If you were going to sit down and design an interface for frame > relay, multi-protocol support, etc, you'd have to be smoking something pretty > strong to come up with netgraph. But its free and there is source, so it > must be great! You are entitled to your opinion. I find it humourous but, that's just my opinion :-) > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message