From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Subject: Re: 386bsd, linux: which runs more out of the box? Date: 30 Mar 1993 04:07:43 GMT
peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>I was particularly disturbed on hearing Linux was using KA9Q as the base of
>its networking code. I'm all too familiar with *that* software. It's an
>amazing feat, getting networking up on DOS (or any system with no usable
>O/S)... but the result is a program with all sorts of weirdnesses.
This is wrong. Linux has a full TCP/IP implementation in the kernel.
It was written from scratch for Linux. I would have preferred a port
of the BSD networking code. But since one purpose of Linux is to be a
backup in case there are legal problems with Networking 2, I guess
it's safest to do it from scratch.
There is a KA9Q port available for Linux. As far as I can tell, it is
used only for SLIP and the ham radio devices. People with Ethernets
use the kernel TCP/IP. Kernel SLIP is still in pre-alpha. KA9Q is a
stopgap, though in my opinion a fairly good one. For a single-user
end user machine, it has reasonable facilities. As a network server,
it leaves a lot to be desired. The architecture isn't bad for a
user-mode TCP/IP. It uses select intelligently, and is fairly
efficient and responsive. (In fact I find that I prefer the feel of
telnet under KA9Q to kermit.) There's a separate telnet program that
talks to it, so you can run telnet sessions from several X windows (or
virtual consoles) if you want. There's also X support, so Linux will
pass packets through to the X server. This lets you open X windows
via SLIP. But KA9Q is not intended as the final Linux solution for
SLIP.