*BSD News Article 88041


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From: dr@ripco.com (David Richards)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.isdn,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: ISDN TA's supported for BSD Unix?
Date: 1 Feb 1997 21:27:36 GMT
Organization: Ripco Communications Inc.
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <5d0cg8$6es$1@gail.ripco.com>
References: <dkulp-ya023380000102971144510001@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rci.ripco.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.dcom.isdn:47881 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34838

In article <dkulp-ya023380000102971144510001@darkstar.ucsc.edu>,
David Kulp <dkulp@cse.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>I'm investigating ISDN and am trying to determine the correct
>TA or router to buy for a PC running BSD Unix.  Do the TA's require
>special drivers for the serial port which are win32 apps, or are
>there drivers for some TAs that run on BSD?

Any external async-serial connected TA looks like nothing more than a FAST
modem as far as BSD is concerned. Regular PPP drivers work fine.

It appears that _most_ parallel-port connected TA's use a custom protocol,
and attaching BSD's pppd to /dev/lpt0 would not work. The Linux camp has
more experience with 'weird' configurations like this :-)

> (I couldn't find any mention of this in the BSD handbook.)

Unfortunately, most Internal TA vendors (which usually do need drivers) are
not very helpful to developers of free Unixlike OSs.

> I'm guessing that the easier option is to get an ISDN router and an
> ethernet card, but this is a significantly more expensive option.

If you're planning to connect multiple machines, the external ISDN router
is probably the best option. It is the fastest external option, unless you
set up an internal SYNChronous serial card on the BSD system... I've never
tried this, PC sync cards aren't all that common.

>Anyone out there with experience here?  I would guess that there
>are a few of you BSD folks running network services on ISDN.
--
David Richards                             Ripco, since Nineteen-Eighty-Three
My opinions are my own,                    Public Access in Chicago
But they are available for rental          Shell/SLIP/PPP/UUCP/ISDN/Leased
dr@ripco.com                               (773) 665-0065 !Free Usenet/E-Mail!