Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!east!hinode!geoff
From: geoff@hinode.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: ODI?
Keywords: NDIS, ODLI, packet driver, PC-NFS
Message-ID: <2397@east.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 14 Aug 90 15:36:40 GMT
References: <11303@j.cc.purdue.edu> <1990Aug13.234051.19998@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@east.East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: geoff@east.sun.com (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top)
Organization: Sun Microsystems PC-NFS Engineering
Lines: 28

Quoth morgan@jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan) (in <1990Aug13.234051.19998@portia.Stanford.EDU>):
#2)  Are vendors of IP software for PCs producing ODI interface
#software for their packages?  Does anyone know of any?

We're not doing anything with ODI [I thought the acronym was "ODLI"?]
for PC-NFS.  I don't know of any customer or board vendor that has
suggested that we should. We are adding NDIS support in the next
release (the driver is already available from Clarkson), and are
evaluating the feasibility of switching to NDIS completely. The main
obstacles seem to be bloat (we've seen some unreasonably big and/or
slow  NDIS drivers from board vendors who have also written tiny
drivers for the PC-NFS LLDK [Link Level Driver Kit]) and ease-of-use:
I don't want to require users to go in and edit PROTOCOL.INI files,
but I haven't found a good way around this yet in the general case.

Why not adopt PD instead? Because in principle I think that NDIS does
demultiplexing "right" and ODLI and PD do it "wrong". I prefer a
procedural model, where a frame (or at least some part of the frame) is
offered to each protocol stack which can accept or reject it, to one
where the driver does the filtering based upon some template. If the
template mechanism is rich enough to do everything I could imagine
wanting to, it is bound to be slower and larger than any single
protocol-specific recognition procedure.

-- Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Microsystems. (geoff@East.Sun.COM)   --
** Back in the USA after a month in England. Most memorable scene: visiting **
** the "Duke Humfrey" library (part of the Bodleian in Oxford): wonderful   **
** 15th century ceiling, incanabulae and desks, the latter with PCs on...   **