FDDI on plan9

FDDI on plan9

[Brandon]

Larry,

	Thanks for sending the letter and being helpful and open with
technical info.  I personally am probably not the person to port the
driver to plan 9, there are probably much more experienced indivduals on
the 9fans mailing list who could take a better shot at it.  This is being
sent to that list in the hopes that somebody else will pick up this thread
with you...  If you'd like to join the 9fans list, send mail to
9fans-request@cse.psu.edu.

	Brandon 


On Tue, 19 Nov 1996, Larry Stefani wrote:

> >>drivers for some popular PCI FDDI cards... Fast Ethernet cards would >>be nice too, but FDDI is of course much better :)
> 
> Hi Brandon,
> 
> Since I work on THE leading PCI FDDI card, I was intrigued by your
> posting.  I know nothing of plan9, but I found your message while doing
> an AltaVista search on FDDI and PCI.  The Linux 2.0.24 and later kernels
> have a DEFXX.C driver I wrote for Digital's FDDI PCI and EISA
> controllers.  Do you have any idea of how easy it would be to port this
> driver to plan9?
> 
> All of the Linux code is downloadable today, and I can certainly help
> you technically if this was something you were interested in working on.
> Regards.  - Larry 
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Larry Stefani                          stefani@lkg.dec.com           |
> | Networks Engineering                   Digital Equipment Corporation |
> | WWW: http://www.networks.digital.com/                                |
> | FTP: ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/adapters/			       |
> |                     Comments are mine, of course...                  |
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> 

FDDI on plan9

[Nigel]

> But for me, wanting a small high performance, all plan 9 network of 5 or
> so machines.. having them all on FDDI would be my preference.....
> 

Enough of these old slow network technologies; anyone got a P1394 driver?


Nigel Roles

FDDI on plan9

[Brandon]

.......
> 
> Is there much interest in FDDI? I thought most people skipped it and went
> from Ethernet to Fast Ethernet like we did. Much cheaper. I have Brazil drivers
> for Digital Fast EtherWORKS PCI 10/100 adapter (DE-500-X), 3Com 3C595 and the
> Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B. You can probably buy a hub and half a dozen
> PCI Fast Ethernet cards for the cost of 2 dual-attach PCI FDDI interfaces.
> 
> If, however, you have a requirement for FDDI then the Digital card looks like
> a good choice.
> 
> --jim
> 

Well.. I have this personal thing against CSMA/CD technology in general
..... Then when you throw in better utilization of bandwidth, highly
tunable timing values, ultra low latency, etc... I just think 100Mbps FDDI
has enough superiority over 100Mbps Ethernet that it justifies the cost. 
Of course, there are situations when you want fast ethernet, i.e. if you
want the best interconnectivity between the 100mbps machines and an
existing 10M ethernet network, 100 and 10 ethernet can be
switched/bridged/whatever without a router hop.... FDDI can be
translationally bridged to ethernet, but translational briding brings up
some problems in and of itself.

But for me, wanting a small high performance, all plan 9 network of 5 or
so machines.. having them all on FDDI would be my preference.....

Brandon

FDDI on plan9

[jmk]

On Tue, 19 Nov 1996, Larry Stefani wrote:

> >>drivers for some popular PCI FDDI cards... Fast Ethernet cards would >>be nice too, but FDDI is of course much better :)
> 
> Hi Brandon,
> 
> Since I work on THE leading PCI FDDI card, I was intrigued by your
> posting.  I know nothing of plan9, but I found your message while doing
> an AltaVista search on FDDI and PCI.  The Linux 2.0.24 and later kernels
> have a DEFXX.C driver I wrote for Digital's FDDI PCI and EISA
> controllers.  Do you have any idea of how easy it would be to port this
> driver to plan9?
> 
> All of the Linux code is downloadable today, and I can certainly help
> you technically if this was something you were interested in working on.
> Regards.  - Larry 
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Larry Stefani                          stefani@lkg.dec.com           |
> | Networks Engineering                   Digital Equipment Corporation |
> | WWW: http://www.networks.digital.com/                                |
> | FTP: ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/adapters/			       |
> |                     Comments are mine, of course...                  |
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------+
> 

While the two systems are different enough that 'porting' a driver is not
really an option, given a working Linux driver as an example and a Digital
technical reference manual (usually excellent), writing a Plan 9 driver is
not hard. It is, however, best to start with the reference manual and only
look at Linux source if problems arise, it can be too confusing otherwise.

Is there much interest in FDDI? I thought most people skipped it and went
from Ethernet to Fast Ethernet like we did. Much cheaper. I have Brazil drivers
for Digital Fast EtherWORKS PCI 10/100 adapter (DE-500-X), 3Com 3C595 and the
Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B. You can probably buy a hub and half a dozen
PCI Fast Ethernet cards for the cost of 2 dual-attach PCI FDDI interfaces.

If, however, you have a requirement for FDDI then the Digital card looks like
a good choice.

--jim