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ATM Adapters for Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the penguins-on-reasonably-fast-pipes dept.

Raxxon asks: "I've been working with some guys in my company laying the groundwork for our next phase of network upgrades. We're looking at having an ATM feed for the main pipe but we're unsure of the Linux ATM support. I know that the firewall code is good (and plentiful) and that for an Ether/Ether or Ether/WAN (frame, DSL, etc) it's great, but with limited knowledge of how well Linux handles ATM, I'm a bit worried about suggesting this as an interface on the router/firewall given that we can convert it back to Ethernet (and in 60% of the case, it's going to stay ether anyway). What's the current state of Linux ATM and is it really worth it?"

2 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. From the grooveyard of forgotten classics... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    A while back [maybe 1997/1998], there was one of those glossy magazines [in the ComputerWorld/InfoWorld/InformationWeek genre] that did a HUGE review of ATM cards [like 25 or more], on a huge variety of OS's [NT, NetWare, OS2, etc.] and concluded they ALL sucked, and refused to endorse any of them.

    Since I can't even remember the name of the now defunct glossy magazine, I'm not doing you much good, but after reading the review, I've always been prejudiced against ATM on the desktop.

    Then I was talking to my cousin, who, back in the day, was a big muckety-muck with Juniper [he cashed out shortly after they went public], and he pointed out to me that ATM doesn't even perform error checking on its packets - i.e. ATM freeloads off the software error checking way up the TCPIP stack. [Remember, classical ethernet gives you both a hardware checksum at layer 2 and the software checksum in the TCPIP stack.]

    The final thing you need to now about ATM is that its greatest proponent was one Albert A "Arnold?" Al-Gore. 'Nuff said.

  2. Wrong Wrong bus = RIGHT BUS!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Wrong bus...

    Ok, HyperTransport is a CPU bus to the Northbridge of the Chipset, to prove my point - can you come up with a URL to a HyperTransport NIC ?

    HyperTransport(TM) Technology - Overview

    Best of all, HyperTransport is software and operating system compatible with the popular Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) interface that is commonly used in most systems today. Unlike the older multi-drop architecture of PCI that reduces throughput when more devices are attached, HyperTransport is a point-to-point line that maintains full throttle performance at all times. Point-to-point attachment also means that there is no bus arbitration overhead, keeping actual I/O bus throughput near the theoretical maximum.

    http://www.hypertransport.org/tech_overview.html

    Don't have to give you a URL - the hypertransport bus is backwards compatible with the old PCI bus, so PCI cards and their drivers [knock on wood] should be able to plug right in!

    And, guess what? It's had chipsets for almost a year now:

    http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=AMD-8111+s outhbridge