Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU!philipp
From: philipp@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (Philip A. Prindeville)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: RE: streams based tcpip vs character based tcpip
Message-ID: <8806122243.AA02891@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 12 Jun 88 22:43:15 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 14


	The difference is that streams based tcpip is built with stream drivers
	and modules where character based tcpip is built with UNIX V or BSD
	character device drivers. Two different technologies.

Actually, BSD doesn't use character device drivers in the traditional
sense.  They use a different approach, with a network interface which
provides a dispatch table (somewhat like the character or block
device interface).

As I remember, the networking code for Version 6 UNIX did the standard
device model, but I forget the details.  (Their might be an RFC on it.)

-Philip