On Fri, 01 Dec 2000, Francois romieu wrote:
> [netdev Cced]
>
> The Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 11:16:52AM -0800, Ivan Passos wrote :
> [...]
> > For synchronous network interfaces, besides configuring network parameters
> > such as IP address, netmask, MTU, etc., the system should also configure
> > parameters specific to these sync i/f's, such as media (e.g V.35, X.21,
> > T1, E1), clock (internal or external, and value if int.), protocol (e.g
> > PPP, HDLC, Frame Relay), etc.
> > What I noticed was that each synchronous board in Linux provides a
> > different way of doing this, and it would be good for users to have a
> > single, standard interface (such as ifconfig) to do this type of
> > configuration. Maybe even patch ifconfig itself, I don't know ...
> >
> > Questions:
> > - Is there any existing _standard_ interface to do that??
>
> No.
>
Humm... If I recall the thread about 802.1Q that happened in June on netdev,
(See the thread starting at
http://sloth.wcug.wwu.edu/lists/netdev/200006/msg00003.html ), and I add up
with what I read here, I think we would be due for a major rewrite of the Layer
2 akin to what Alexey did for Layer 3 in 2.2.
A lot of questions need to be answered like:
What is _really_ a net_device ? (Hardware card, interface to tag a L3 address
on, etc..)
Considering the following divisions that exist today:
- A hardware card (or let's say a chipset so that anything on a mobo count as
well) can have many physical ports. I will call them PHY.
- A PHY can use TDM or Wavelenght Multiplexing (including Lambdas on
GEthernet and 10 GEthernet fibers) or both ! to create physical channels.
I'll call them Channels.
- Each of these Channels may further on use logics in header to (possibly)
create virtual links (802.1Q, MPLS (?)) Let's call this top abstraction a
Link, that is, something that can receive a L3 address.
Consider as well that you want to maintain the actual funtionnality of the
kernel, including:
- Bridging.
- 802.1Q VLANing (with a patch from one of Gleb or Ben's Project)
- Bridging/802.1Q (Is this possible yet ?)
- Hooking a _lot_ of different L3 on top of L2 (including AplleTalk, etc)
- simple user tools like, ifconfig, and very powerful one, like ip.
How many abstractions are really desirable at Layer 2 in order to limit the
proliferation of tools linked to specific hardware?
-- François Desloges fd@vipswitch.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Dec 07 2000 - 21:00:08 EST