*BSD News Article 20500


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From: iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: BSD UNIX
Message-ID: <1993Sep6.162039.12812@swan.pyr>
Organization: Swansea University College
References: <MUTS.93Sep2205147@compi.hobby.nl> <michaelv.747084422@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> <CCxLn8.Iv8@zap.uniforum.qc.ca>
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1993 16:20:39 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <CCxLn8.Iv8@zap.uniforum.qc.ca> fortin@zap.uniforum.qc.ca (Denis Fortin) writes:
>In article <michaelv.747084422@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) writes:
>>Linux is a completely different beast.  [...]
>>Until recently, its networking was not at all complete.  They have recently 
>>adopted Net/2, but it is still somewhat buggy.
It's none too complete now, however its great fun helping to debug it.
>
>Actually, I recently discovered by reading one of the Linux FAQs that 
>Linux's Net-2 simply means "the second release of the Linux networking
>code" and has nothing to do with Berkeley's Net/2 (which I originally
>thought it was).

This is unfortunately misleading there is NET-2 and NET/2 for Linux. The
first is FvK's work on Ross Biro's from scratch tcp/ip for Linux, the second
is a port of BSD Networking release 2 for Linux. Both exist, both are used.
In time NET-2 should be as good as the BSD networking, but for the moment
its providing some good lessons on interrupt and network writing.
The original primary motive was to avoid potentially 'contaminated' code
from BSD releases getting into Linux given the ATT v BSDI lawsuit. Without
that I'm fairly sure the BSD networking code would have been used straight off.

Alan
iiitac@pyr.swan.ac.uk