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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!news.rediris.es!newsfeed.mad.ibernet.es!news.ddnet.es!gmv.es!btnet-feed3!unlisys!blackbush.xlink.net!news.ppp.net!sep.hamburg.com!hmo From: hmo@sep.hamburg.com (Helge Oldach) Subject: Re: FreeBSD and ISDN -- final analysis? Message-ID: <EC1CHv.7u@sep.hamburg.com> Sender: hmo@sep.hamburg.com (Helge Oldach) Organization: Somebody Else's Problem References: <5obd62$18v@news.gvsu.edu> Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 18:25:06 GMT X-Active: Trust me, Microsoft knows what I'm doing Lines: 48 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:43186 In <5obd62$18v@news.gvsu.edu> behrensm@river.it.gvsu.edu (Matt Behrens) writes: | In my quest to figure out if FreeBSD & ISDN really is possible, I did a | little research first (even R-ingTFM, believe it or not) :) and have come | up with two conflicting information sources. | 1. The FreeBSD handbook states that ISDN is possible simply by hooking it | up to the serial port and using PPP, albeit limited to 115Kbps. | 2. Joerg (my apologies if I mispelled the name, I am a product of the | American public education system after all) ;) said in a post about a | month ago that ISDN needed the BISDN package, which was in a state of | incompleteness due to a need for complete rewrites right now. | Which is correct? Both. :-) Case 1 is hooking up an external ISDN terminal adaptor to a serial board. The Motorola Bitsurfr appears to be popular in the States. You just talk to this device like a modem, i.e. using the asynchroneous serial interfaces of a PC. You don't need any special kernel configuration. You would typically run (asynchroneous) PPP over the serial link. Case 2 is based on plugged-in ISDN boards. The BISDN driver is hooked into the kernel and support direct, synchroneous access to the two B channels. It supports raw HDLC (popular in Europe) stably since a long time, however PPP (the Internet standard transport mechanism) is being under development right now. To justify which is the better choice, more input on the environment would be required. I could easily write some hundred lines of pros and cons, but that would probably leave you confused. As a rule of thumb, the Bitsurfr approach is probably more straight-forward in the US if you can build on your knowledge of dealing with modems in a Unix environment. | I have a customer who wants a machine built, wants to move to ISDN at | some point in the future, I'd suggest to go ahead with setting up a FreeBSD. You will need to touch the machine anyway when ISDN is being installed in either case. Your choice of ISDN option may probably be more influenced by availablity of software at that time. The "Internet standard" approach is certainly silently moving towards option 2. | and would prefer FreeBSD over Linux because of the stability. Of course. :-) Helge