Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 14:12:50 -0800 (PST) From: wpaul@FreeBSD.ORG (Bill Paul) To: msmith@freebsd.org (Mike Smith) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: if_fxp - the real point Message-ID: <20010309221250.2384337B71B@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <200103091823.f29INLs06070@mass.dis.org> from Mike Smith at "Mar 9, 2001 10:23:21 am"
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Grrrrr.
(Yes, that's a bad omen. Get the women and children to safety now.)
(On second thought, leave the women.)
I think there's one important point that a lot of you are missing here,
which is GETTING DOCUMENTATION. I've seen a couple people suggest that
they'd be willing to donate time/code/etc to fix the fxp driver, but I
strongly suspect that most of these people don't have the slighest idea
what's really involved. You can't just look at the driver code, poke at
it for a while, and expect the answer to fall out: you need the damn
manual for it. And you can't get that from Intel because they're NDA
nazis. (Johnathan Lemon is the one exception to this since he apparently
has ways to gain access to Intel documentation thanks to his job. I think
he's still subject to NDAs though, so I question just how much help he
can really provide. Not that I don't encourge him to do an end run around
Intel wherever he can, of course.)
I see lots of finger-pointing here, yet nobody seems to be prepared to
fault the real culprit, namely Intel. Nobody sends nasty e-mails to
their Intel sales reps or other high mucky-mucks taking them to task over
their nonsensical NDA requirements. Nobody makes any effort to explain to
them just how much more sense it would make and how much more money they
would earn by simply preparing some decent manuals for a change and not
being so anal-retentive about releasing them. If everyone would concentate
their energy on this for a change instead of sniping at each other, I would
be a happy man.
(Alright, I'm exagerating. It would take significantly more than that to
make me happy, but that's a rant for another day.)
Right now I'd like to be able to write some more NIC drivers, but I have
the following problems:
Tigon 3:
-------
3Com now owns Alteon's gigabit NIC business, and Alteon's open driver
development program seems to have been killed off. To make matters worse,
the Tigon 3 seems to actually be a Broadcom product called the BCM 5700.
Broadcom an even bigger NDA nazi than Intel, if you can believe that, and
3Com usually has no idea what's going on with regards to hardware that it
it didn't built itself. It also has a tendency to drag its feet when it
comes to putting together decent manuals for release to non-NDA partners.
3Com 3CR990
-----------
This is 3Com's ARM-based 10/100 NIC that can do hardware encryption.
I have no idea how to get programming info for this NIC out of 3Com without
NDA.
Level1 LXT1000
--------------
This is a gigabit MAC which D-Link is shipping on their gigabit ethernet
cards. Intel owns Level1 now, and documentation for the LXT1000 controller
is nowhere to be found.
Broadcom 10mbps homePNA
-----------------------
I tried navigating Broadcom's sales/support maze looking for info on
this chip, they told me they weren't interested in releasing any info
without NDA at this time. From what I've been told, this chip has some
other functionality built into it which allows it to be used for more
than just homePNA networking, and Broadcom simply doesn't want to tell
people about it. I don't care one way or the other.
USB 802.11 wireless NICs
-----------------
Somebody pointed one of these out to me recently, I think they're a
D-Link product. Again, I don't know who makes them or where to find
manuals. No documentation, no cookie.
There's probably other cases here that I've forgotten. Regardless, it
really cheeses me off when people ask me "hey, I just saw such-and-such
card that looks really neat; if I get you one, can you write a driver
for it? I'd be happy to test it for you." Having a sample card doesn't
do a damn thing for me THE STINKING PROGRAMMING MANUAL. If I *had* the
manuals for these things, I'd be probably already be working on drivers!
"But Bill, you work for BSDi now. Can't they get you manuals?" Working for
BSDi is irrelevant: I can't sign any NDAs if I want to release driver
source, and I do want to release the source. And there isn't a designated
person at BSDi that I can turn to to help turn up the heat on recalcitrant
vendors. I'm not willing to go sneaking around and mooching these things
from secret sources since it just perpetuates the officially sanctioned
vendor stupidity. I don't want to have meetings, negotiations or "strategic
partnerships," I just want the stupid programming manuals without NDAs.
A few other things while I'm here. D-Link, LinkSys and Netgear do *NOT*
make their own 10/100 NIC controller chips. They buy them from other
companies. In some cases, they buy the whole card and simply stamp their
name on it. There were at least 4 companies at one point all selling the
exact same PNIC 82c169 card under different names. LinkSys is currently
using the ADMtek Centaur PCI and Cardbus chips in their 10/100 NICs.
Netgear is using the NatSemi DP83815 chipset on their FA311 and FA312
cards. D-Link uses RealTek 8139 and VIA Rhine II chips depending on just
which model NIC you happen to get. The D-Link DFE-570TX quad port card
uses the Intel 21143, and it's dirt cheap compared to the ZNYX and
Adaptec cards of similar design, assuming you can find them. The
interesting thign is that *all* of these chips have manuals available
from their respective vendors WITHOUT NDAs, so I don't want to hear
people telling me that NDAs are "just the price of doing business." I
have stacks of unencumbered manuals here, and I'd be more than happy to
smack people upside the head with them to prove them wrong.
I'm getting really tired of being the only one beating this drum. I keep
telling people to complain to whoever will listen inside these companies
in the hopes that *somebody* will get the point. I also keep hoping that
other people will appear and demonstrate some driver fu so that I don't
have to be the only one people will turn to when they have a NIC that they
want supported. I'm only one person, not a code generating machine, and
I don't spend 24 hours a day agonizing over how I'm going to support
every single network card on the planet. I tried it and it sucked, and
not getting any support from the really big vendors or from inside BSDi
doesn't make it any more appealing.
All I can say is, Johnathan, I'm glad it's you and not me. And Dennis,
you deserve a working driver. I really hope you get it. Part of me even
wishes I could fix the problems for you, but my hands are tied and my
patience has word thin.
-Bill
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul (925) 691-2800 | Systems Programmer, Master of Unix-Fu
wpaul@osd.bsdi.com | BSDi Open Source Solutions
=============================================================================
"I like zees guys. Zey are fonny guys. Just keel one of zem." -- The 3 Amigos
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