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To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@ref.tfs.com>
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Anyone interested in a STREAMS port? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 03 Jun 1995 09:13:30 MST."
             <199506031613.JAA13132@ref.tfs.com> 
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Date: Sat, 03 Jun 1995 12:45:08 +0000
From: Matt Thomas <matt@lkg.dec.com>
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> > Hi crowd,
> > 
> > is there anyone interested in a STREAMS port?  Matthias Urlichs
> 
> I think streams are a great invention for tty devices, but I'm not
> at all sure for networks.

I can think of lots of things.  The first is that it makes doing a
TLI/XTI compatible library alot simpler.

Digital UNIX (aka DEC OSF/1) has a streams interface to both the
datalink (DLPI) and various transport (TCP, UDP).

On top of the TCP interface (using XTI in user mode) I have a
XTI/streams based rlogind/telnetd daemon which takes incoming
connections, forks to handle the incoming connection, performs
the initial protocol work, and then pushes on either a rlogind or
telnetd streams module, and execs login right over itself.

This module converts talks TPI to TCP on the bottom and talks to
ldterm (the streams terminal line discipline module) on the top.
Hence the network connection is now a terminal.  Even better there
are no context switches when doing I/O, no extra processes, less CPU
utilization, ...

Maybe one of these days Digital UNIX will pick it up.  Naaa.

STREAMS, while not perfect by any means, is useful and would be healty
addition for FreeBSD (or NetBSD).  It would make an SVR4 compatible
environment that much closer to reality.


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.