Template Version: @(#)sac_nextcase 1.68 02/23/09 SMI
This information is Copyright 2010 Sun Microsystems
1. Introduction
1.1. Project/Component Working Name:
EOF elxl
1.2. Name of Document Author/Supplier:
Author: Garrett D'Amore
1.3 Date of This Document:
05 January, 2010
4. Technical Description
elxl is a closed source driver supporting certain legacy ethernet cards
from 3Com. (The 3c905 line, and a few compatible family members.) Note
that these NICs were not used on any Sun branded equipment, and have not
been popular for many years. They are still available from discounters who
have been selling refurbs and surplus, but are no longer manufactured. (3Com
stopped offering these products in 2006.)
Many of these compatible devices were 10 Mbit only, and lacked
support for MII or autonegotiation. They often supported automatic
link detection between 10BASE-2, AUI, and 10BASE-T. However, link
detection is not in all circumstances guaranteed.
Addionally these devices generally lack support for larger frames, making
them one of the last remaining ethernet devices supported by Solaris
which cannot fully support VLANs with regular MTUs.
There is a subset of devices that elxl supports which is free from
these restrictions, but it is our opinion that re-engineering this driver
to remove the restrictions would cost considerably more time than the
effort is worth. Additionally, sustaining support for these devices
is becoming expensive as we no longer retain legacy 10BASE-2 or AUI network
infrastructure.
There are now a lot of additional options for 10/100 ethernet that were not
present when elxl was written, many of which can be had for about $10USD and
are fully supported as GLDv3 devices.
Additionally, there are now inexpensive gigabit options (rtl8169 based
devices, amongst many others).
Given all this, we would like to EOF the elxl driver in the next minor release
of Solaris. (I.e. this is for minor binding.)
6. Resources and Schedule
6.4. Steering Committee requested information
6.4.1. Consolidation C-team Name:
ON
6.5. ARC review type: FastTrack
6.6. ARC Exposure: open
