Re: [RTnet-developers] rtnet w. interrupts disabled

[Jan K. <jan...@we...>]

Tom Schouten wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Is it planned to have rtnet operate without network device interrupts?

Not yet.

> I.e. a non-blocking recv() call would query the card directly without 
> buffering, leaving all read timing up to the application.

Note that this gets "tricky" if there is additional protocol handling
required (like ARP, ICMP, UDP, RTmac, TDMA etc.) or if more than one
thread is receiving data at the same time. The model only works
straightforward if you do plain Ethernet access with users that all
expect the polling mode.

> 
> If not planned, maybe you have some advice on how to implement this?
> I'm currently looking into modifying the eepro100 driver, but maybe
> there is a more highlevel way?

A definitely needs a high level handling as well because you always go
through the stack to access a driver. As a first step, you may want to
study Linux' NAPI interface and check what might be applicable to RTnet.
Then I would suggest posting your ideas about an extended driver
interface here so that we can discuss how to integrate it best into the
stack.

Out of curiosity: What is your scenario, your cycle frequency so that
you may need polling?

Jan