De-orbitting ATM-HARP

[Harti Brandt]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Bruce M Simpson wrote:

BMS>On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 10:52:43PM +0200, Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav wrote:
BMS>> Uh?  PPP uses netgraph, which has its own socket thingy.
BMS>
BMS>Postscript. It struck my mind that you were possibly thinking of the
BMS>netgraph-based, kernel-space implementation of PPP, in particular
BMS>the ng_pppoe node.
BMS>
BMS>This only knows about the PPP-over-Ethernet encapsulation. If someone
BMS>were to write the necessary node to support the PPP-over-ATM encapsulation,
BMS>then yes, we probably could make NATM go away, but then Netgraph would be
BMS>the only means of working with ATM virtual circuits under FreeBSD, which
BMS>has debatable merits.

Which?

BMS>HARP may be old and crufty, NATM is but a small part of it, but it would be
BMS>the last piece of ATM code which we have in common with the other BSDs. In
BMS>terms of code quality and design, I've found it far nicer to work with than
BMS>the equivalent Linux offering. Besides, I think being able to have native
BMS>ADSL connectivity on a *BSD machine is a good thing.

NATM is NOT part of HARP. We can safely remove HARP without touching NATM. 
But someone needs to sit down and fix NATM to be MPSAFE.

harti

BMS>Deprecating NATM for the 6.0 lifetime would affect several users, developers
BMS>and committers who are working towards this. I'd be more than happy to see
BMS>ng_pppoa go in for 6.0, though.
BMS>
BMS>[That would be an excellent idea - being able to run MPD on top of ATM would
BMS>let us do native xDSL channel bonding on FreeBSD.]
BMS>
BMS>Just my 2c (about to change back to pence),
BMS>BMS
BMS>
BMS>
BMS>