Re: [PATCH 0/9] isdn4linux: add drivers for Siemens Gigaset ISDNDECT PABX

[Tilman Schmidt]

On 2005-12-19 18:01, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 17:38 +0100, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
> 
>>Unfortunately these don't fit our needs, as we are not dealing with a
>>network device, but with an ISDN device.
> 
> Um, isn't that what the N in ISDN stands for?

While the ISDN is indeed called a network, devices connecting a computer
to it are nevertheless not commonly referred to as network devices.

> I guess what you mean is that although ISDN devices are obviously
> networking devices, the kernel uses a separate subsystem for ISDN?

There's more to it than that. The notion of a "network" is a rather
broad one, including such diverse phenomena as Ethernet, ISDN, TV cable
or even roads or TV stations. The notion of a "network device", on the
other hand, is a quite specific one, at least in the computer world, and
it certainly doesn't include ISDN TAs.

In fact, the operation of an ISDN device is much closer to a modem or
even an answering machine than to that prototypical network device which
is the Ethernet card. This is of course the reason why the Linux kernel
puts them in a subsystem of their own. Making them net_device-s just
wouldn't work.

-- 
Tilman Schmidt                          E-Mail: tilman@xxxxxxx
Bonn, Germany
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