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To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert)
Cc: osyjm@cdsnet.net, root@deadline.snafu.de, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Q: Does anyone know about implementing LAT support? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 20 Apr 1995 11:47:29 MDT."
             <9504201747.AA25620@cs.weber.edu> 
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Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 14:32:52 +0000
From: Matt Thomas <matt@lkg.dec.com>
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> > I have about half a DECnet kernel written (source compatible with 
> > DECnet-ULTRIX at the socket and library level).  One of the problems
> > is that none of the LAN drivers support multiple physical addresses.
> > Nor is there is a way to enable a different physical address.
> 
> Tell me this can be distributed as free software...

That's my goal.  But it's take me awhile to write it all.

> Do you really require multiple physical addresses, or just need to
> reprogram the one physical address to match the DECNet address?

Since FDDI allows multiple physical addresses (as does the DEC PCI Ethernet
chips), it would be nice to simply add another physical address.

> I thought multiple addresses were only necessary to put up cluster
> specific addresses.

Not even required for that, but if DECnet doesn't have to change the
physical address used by IP and other protocols, so much the better.

I'm think I'm going to use the ifalias support and extend it to AF_LINK 
sockaddrs.  So if SIOCAIFADDR fails, then I'll fall back to SIOCIFADDR.

The worst thing is that this means all the drivers will have to change
to support DECnet.  I'll be sure to make my drivers support DECnet
but I'll leave the other drivers to others.

My goal is to minimize the changes required to the system to support DECnet.


Matt Thomas                          Internet:   matt@lkg.dec.com
U*X Networking                       WWW URL:    http://ftp.dec.com/%7Ethomas/
Digital Equipment Corporation        Disclaimer: This message reflects my
Littleton, MA                                    own warped views, etc.