Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 19 Dec 2005 13:30:22 -0800 | From | Stephen Hemminger <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/9] isdn4linux: add drivers for Siemens Gigaset ISDN DECT PABX |
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On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 20:22:42 +0100 Tilman Schmidt <tilman@imap.cc> wrote:
> On 2005-12-19 18:01, Lee Revell wrote: > > On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 17:38 +0100, Tilman Schmidt wrote: > > > >>Unfortunately these don't fit our needs, as we are not dealing with a > >>network device, but with an ISDN device. > > > > Um, isn't that what the N in ISDN stands for? > > While the ISDN is indeed called a network, devices connecting a computer > to it are nevertheless not commonly referred to as network devices. > > > I guess what you mean is that although ISDN devices are obviously > > networking devices, the kernel uses a separate subsystem for ISDN? > > There's more to it than that. The notion of a "network" is a rather > broad one, including such diverse phenomena as Ethernet, ISDN, TV cable > or even roads or TV stations. The notion of a "network device", on the > other hand, is a quite specific one, at least in the computer world, and > it certainly doesn't include ISDN TAs. > > In fact, the operation of an ISDN device is much closer to a modem or > even an answering machine than to that prototypical network device which > is the Ethernet card. This is of course the reason why the Linux kernel > puts them in a subsystem of their own. Making them net_device-s just > wouldn't work. >
My definition is simple. Any device driver that exports a netdevice interface needs to be reviewed on netdev to make sure the assumptions about network device semantics are being followed.
-- Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org> OSDL http://developer.osdl.org/~shemminger - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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