| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | Frame Relay (FR) support for linux is built into a two tiered system of device |
| 2 | drivers. The upper layer implements RFC1490 FR specification, and uses the |
| 3 | Data Link Connection Identifier (DLCI) as its hardware address. Usually these |
| 4 | are assigned by your network supplier, they give you the number/numbers of |
| 5 | the Virtual Connections (VC) assigned to you. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Each DLCI is a point-to-point link between your machine and a remote one. |
| 8 | As such, a separate device is needed to accommodate the routing. Within the |
| 9 | net-tools archives is 'dlcicfg'. This program will communicate with the |
| 10 | base "DLCI" device, and create new net devices named 'dlci00', 'dlci01'... |
| 11 | The configuration script will ask you how many DLCIs you need, as well as |
| 12 | how many DLCIs you want to assign to each Frame Relay Access Device (FRAD). |
| 13 | |
| 14 | The DLCI uses a number of function calls to communicate with the FRAD, all |
| 15 | of which are stored in the FRAD's private data area. assoc/deassoc, |
| 16 | activate/deactivate and dlci_config. The DLCI supplies a receive function |
| 17 | to the FRAD to accept incoming packets. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | With this initial offering, only 1 FRAD driver is available. With many thanks |
| 20 | to Sangoma Technologies, David Mandelstam & Gene Kozin, the S502A, S502E & |
| 21 | S508 are supported. This driver is currently set up for only FR, but as |
| 22 | Sangoma makes more firmware modules available, it can be updated to provide |
| 23 | them as well. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Configuration of the FRAD makes use of another net-tools program, 'fradcfg'. |
| 26 | This program makes use of a configuration file (which dlcicfg can also read) |
| 27 | to specify the types of boards to be configured as FRADs, as well as perform |
| 28 | any board specific configuration. The Sangoma module of fradcfg loads the |
| 29 | FR firmware into the card, sets the irq/port/memory information, and provides |
| 30 | an initial configuration. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | Additional FRAD device drivers can be added as hardware is available. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | At this time, the dlcicfg and fradcfg programs have not been incorporated into |
| 35 | the net-tools distribution. They can be found at ftp.invlogic.com, in |
| 36 | /pub/linux. Note that with OS/2 FTPD, you end up in /pub by default, so just |
| 37 | use 'cd linux'. v0.10 is for use on pre-2.0.3 and earlier, v0.15 is for |
| 38 | pre-2.0.4 and later. |
| 39 | |