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