Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 11:26:13 -0400 From: "Jim Flowers" <jflowers@ezo.net> To: "Luigi Rizzo" <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Cc: <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Who is using the wavelan driver ? Message-ID: <01bdfaab$a400a820$858266ce@violet.ezo.net>
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I have the cards, use them regularly and would be pleased to test your work. Currently, I have two test units running on pci boxes with Cyrix GXi 180 MHz processors and running picobsd 0.4 with wlconfig compiled in against FreeBSD 2.2.7. NIC is 10/100. Cards are WaveLAN ISA, old style (1/2AT). Also have Pentium 200 MHz pci box but had to hack the wl driver to get the modem to initialize and come up running, probably due to a higher speed ISA bus. Currently use for wireless Internet access from an old style WavePOINT and for point-to-point network connections both using tcp/ip routing. There are interesting interactions between WavePOINTs and WaveLANs. Performance seems to be OK. Will probably replace the WavePOINTS with multiple WaveLAN cards at different frequencies and use dummynet to regulate bandwidth to contracted bandwidth for each distant node by IP number as we begin to load the system. Studied the wl code some to figure out the hacks but could never get all the way as I couldn't find the source documents for the modem or the Intel Ethernet driver on the card. There are a couple of patches for wl in the CVS addressing specific problems. I haven't tried them yet as my current setup works OK. The newer (802.11) cards aren't very friendly for 3hd parties as they don't support ad-hoc networking, aren't backwards compatable and have a lousy external antenna connector. They also use a modem adapter rather than an Ethernet interface so not much hope for the wl. I also notice the www.wavelan.com site is no longer responding and Lucent doesn't have anything about WaveLAN on their site. We have cards on backorder for 4 to 6 weeks. Maybe all of WaveLAN is history? -----Original Message----- From: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Date: Sunday, October 18, 1998 5:15 AM Subject: Who is using the wavelan driver ? >Hi, > >is there anyone using the wavelan driver in FreeBSD ? > >I was trying to apply bridging patches to it but noticed the driver is >a bit weird e.g.: > > * it loads the ethernet header outside the mbuf, then plays tricks to > put it back in for bpf use; > * it uses a mbuf cluster to hold the packet, but then allocates more > regular mbufs if the packet does not fit into the first one > (i suppose you can configure the wl card to use packets larger than > 2KB...) > >i need to straighten this a bit for bridging support but don't have the >card to test things, so if someone has the card and time to test the >changes please contact me. > > thanks > luigi >-----------------------------+-------------------------------------- >Luigi Rizzo | Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione >email: luigi@iet.unipi.it | Universita' di Pisa >tel: +39-50-568533 | via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy) >fax: +39-50-568522 | http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ >_____________________________|______________________________________ > >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
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