From owner-freebsd-isp Mon Jun 23 10:58:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA18242 for isp-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:58:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sabre.goldsword.com (sabre.goldsword.com [199.170.202.32]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA18230 for ; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:58:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jfarmer@localhost) by sabre.goldsword.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA18585; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:45:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:45:57 -0400 (EDT) From: "John T. Farmer" Message-Id: <199706231745.NAA18585@sabre.goldsword.com> To: jas@flyingfox.com, jfarmer@sabre.goldsword.com Subject: Re: ISDN Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-isp@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:01:58 -0700 (PDT) Jim Shankland said: >John T. Farmer writes: >> What about setting up the TA with the DTE speed greater than the 128k? >> I know that the usr I-courier supports upto 230kb/s DTE speeds (and my >> Computone Intelliserver supports upto 200kb/s...) >> >> The other option would be to look at using a synchronous port of some >> sort... > >Sure. Or just throw in the towel and get a Pipe50 or equivalent. Despite >its shortcomings (like the User Interface From Hell (TM)), I'd sooner >live with a stack of Pipe50's in the office than a stack of ISDN TA's >plugged into serial ports at 115.2 Kb/s or 230.4 Kb/s. I can find >better ways to give myself a headache :-). > >Now if there were an internal ISDN card that did the PPP framing and >CRC generation/checking itself, and interrupted once per PPP frame >(analogous to what an Ethernet card does), and were robust and >reliable and well-supported and cheap, and came with a solid FreeBSD >driver, or at least with good enough support and specs to write a >solid FreeBSD driver, and ... oops, I just woke up. > When I'm dealing with ISDN only, that is exactly what I do. :^> However, as I mentioned in an earlier note, I need to support some of the early "bandwagon riders" with x2 or k56flex. So far, most of my queries from clients have been for x2. That coupled with the fact that the cheapest entry point for antthing that will do k56 and v.34bis (and optionally native ISDN) from Ascend is ~$7.5k. I'm attempting to kludge together something that will let me transition from my rack of individual analog lines & modems to digital stuff without killing the (non-existant) capital budget :^<. I have been wondering about the various ISA bus cards that have been showwing up lately such as the Cardinal or the Ascend Netwarp. My understanding of these is that some part of the protocol and/or call handling is done in the driver, but I'm not sure how it's split between hardware & software. John ------------------------------------------------------------------------- John T. Farmer Proprietor, GoldSword Systems jfarmer@goldsword.com Public Internet Access in East Tennessee dial-in (423)470-9953 for info, e-mail to info@goldsword.com Network Design, Internet Services & Servers, Consulting