[openbeosnetteam] Re: link level protocol

On 2006-07-21 at 15:02:18 [+0200], Axel Dörfler <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> in BONE, the AF_LINK domain is registered by the "peeper" module.
> AFAICT, it's thought usage is for packet capturing only. As you can see
> in BONE's struct ifnet, there is a direct pointer to that peeper - and
> that's needed, because that peeper doesn't eat packets, and the AF_LINK
> domain is not a real domain that receives any packets.
> Since the datalink module is no longer a protocol module, we need some
> kind of protocol module that represents the AF_LINK domain.
> 
> It makes actually sense to have a "peeper" like functionality in there,
> though, since reading the socket can directly give you access to the
> link level buffer data (deframed, though).
> 
> Would you think it makes sense to have a link protocol that can also
> send and receive buffers at link level, though?
> In that case, a "link" protocol would just give you raw access to the
> link level, just like an IP socket would do. It would get any packet
> where there was no other handler for.
> However, you could still get the monitoring functionality when you
> start packet capturing on that socket.

Such that starting packet capturizing would route all data through this 
socket (even that for which other handlers exist)?

> Do you think that additional functionality makes sense? It would give
> you the possibility to implement home-brewn (or proprietary) protocols
> in userland, even though receiving data would be pretty inefficient
> with more than one link level socket at a time - unless we implement
> some additional filtering capabilities for that (which could more or
> less easily be done, too, if we want to).

Sounds good to me, unless the alternative be much less work (which I doubt).

cheers,
        Oliver

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