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Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 21:58:59 -0500
From: Brad Karp <karp@eecs.harvard.edu>
Message-Id: <199712080258.VAA19022@dominator.eecs.harvard.edu>
To: pst@shockwave.com
Subject: FreeBSD Metricom driver: I wrote one in September...
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, karp@dominator.eecs.harvard.edu
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A friend forwarded me the thread from freebsd-hackers (to which I
don't subscribe) about a Metricom radio driver for FreeBSD: specifically,
that some are considering writing one, and that consensus was that one
didn't already exist. Not true!

I wrote a complete StarMode driver for IP over Metricom radios for FreeBSD in
September, as part of a wireless routing research project I'm starting in
Harvard's Computer Science department and at ISI. The driver is called HUMR,
the Harvard User-level Metricom Radio driver.

My driver is written over the IP tunnel (tun), and is completely portable
(no #ifdefs, even) between FreeBSD and NetBSD (I use it on both systems). It
does neighbor discovery, dynamically handles IP-to-MAC mapping for the radios
(with no centralized ARP server, despite the non-broadcast nature of Metricom's
radios), and works very well, overall.

I wanted to mention this so that others might not spend time duplicating
effort I've already spent, and so that my work is known. I hadn't placed
an emphasis on getting the code widely distributed so far because I'm more
interested in getting routing research results that use my driver as a
substrate.

I can provide the code to interested parties, and would certainly be very happy
to see it distributed as part of FreeBSD, if there is interest and someone with
sufficient authority to fold it in invites me to contribute it.

Again, as I don't subscribe to freebsd-hackers, please address comments,
questions, and/or requests for the code to me by email.

Regards,
-Brad, karp@eecs.harvard.edu