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Date:      Tue, 25 Jun 1996 15:47:02 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "JULIAN Elischer" <julian@ref.tfs.com>
To:        rminnich@Sarnoff.COM (Ron G. Minnich)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Frame relay and ATM support: virtual interface per vpi?
Message-ID:  <199606252247.PAA00954@ref.tfs.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960625082415.23860A-100000@terra> from "Ron G. Minnich" at Jun 25, 96 08:25:27 am

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> 
> 
> virtual interface per vpi is what i'm doing for MINI. I have to: MINI 
> looks like 4096 atm interfaces *at the hardware level*, so the carrying 
> that through to the OS and applications makes sense. 
> 
> I vote for the virtual interface approach ...
err yukk!
:)

what do you mean "at the hardware"?
does it have 4096 interrupt vectors and 4096 shared memeory buffers?

I put it to you that there is only one driver running, with
one 'instance' of itself, and that there is only one 
line to the outside, and one "packet's received" counter.
(well there may be more I guess). I also guess that you can't run one 
at one  speed and another at another speed...
If you bring down the interface, they should all stop etc.etc.
in other words, while your hardware might support 4096 VCIs I'll
bet that I can make as good an argument for having one interface as you can for 
having many..
One might as well argue that ethjernet should be implimented by having
a separate virtual interface for every machine for which there is an
ARP table entry.

I'm not really arguing AGAINST you rather than trying to understand the reasons
being used as If I start writing something that will be available in FreeBSD
as a standard interface (in much the same way that my SCSI interface is 
the standard interface for BSD scsi drivers) for VC based interfaces
then I don;t want to have to REWRITE it too many times when I find that
the original method is unworkable..

julian
> ron
> 
> Ron Minnich                |"Inferno runs on MIPS ..., Intel ..., and AMD's
> rminnich@sarnoff.com       |29-kilobit-per-second chip-based architectures ..."
> (609)-734-3120             |  Comm. week, may 13, pg. 4. 
> ftp://ftp.sarnoff.com/pub/mnfs/www/docs/cluster.html 
> 
> 
> 




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