Hi all, as you doubtless know, there are two drivers for the Alcatel speedtouch ADSL modem: one from Alcatel (more or less; written by Johan Verrept), see http://www.linux-usb.org/SpeedTouch/howto.html. I'll refer to this as the kernel space driver since most of it is implemented as a kernel module. The other driver (written by Benoit Papillault and others) you all know about since this mailing list is dedicated to it! I will call it the user space driver since runs in user space.
I've been hacking on the kernel space driver, eliminating race conditions (it crashes on SMP systems) and cleaning it up (for example, eliminating the kernel thread used for polling the receive queue). [For me the most important thing is to have it work with SMP/preempt.] Anyway, I was hacking away on it the other day when a luminous thought struck me: "Why not use the user space driver instead?" The main advantage of the kernel space driver is that it has very low overhead: it gets data from (and sends data to) the modem extremely fast, with a minimum of CPU use. [The main disadvantages of the kernel space driver (for me) are: (1) some closed source code is run (management daemon), (2) it requires patching pppd for PPP over ATM.] My question is: is the extra overhead of the user space driver worth caring about? In other words: should I stop hacking the kernel module? All the best, Duncan. Liste de diffusion modem ALCATEL SpeedTouch USB Pour se d�sinscrire : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe
