From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dan Williams Subject: Re: Network device driver with PPP Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:15:55 -0500 Message-ID: <1204164955.26292.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <3415E2A2AB26944B9159CDB22001004D024DA732@nestea.sierrawireless.local> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Kevin Lloyd Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:44024 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751763AbYB1CSU (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:18:20 -0500 In-Reply-To: <3415E2A2AB26944B9159CDB22001004D024DA732@nestea.sierrawireless.local> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 17:28 -0800, Kevin Lloyd wrote: > Hi all, > > I have a device that is currently supported via a combination of loading the device with usb-serial (drivers/usb/serial/sierra) to expose the serial ports and connecting by manually launching pppd. > I would like to support this device in a network driver as opposed to a serial driver in an effort to offer a seamless always-on device, such as an Ethernet device. > > From what I understand the ppp support in the kernel is only for ppp framing and that all control (e.g., IPCP) is done in user-space via pppd. Are there any network drivers that currently manage the ppp connection (entirely, IPCP included) internally to the driver and expose either a raw ip or ethernet stream to the user-space? That seems quite icky to do all in kernel space and a pile of code running in the kernel. What's so wrong with userspace? Don't you need to push values to the driver like username/password and get IP config out of it (which would involve userspace anyway)? It just seems like there's a different solution to your actual problem here than stuff all off pppd into kernel space. Dan