NAME

dlpi − Data Link Provider Interface

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/dlpi.h>

DESCRIPTION

SunOS STREAMS-based device drivers wishing to support the STREAMS TCP/IP and other STREAMS-based networking protocol suite implementations support Version 2 of the Data Link Provider Interface (DLPI).  DLPI V2 enables a data link service user to access and use any of a variety of conforming data link service providers without special knowledge of the provider’s protocol.  Specifically, the interface is intended to support Ethernet, X.25 LAPB, SDLC, ISDN LAPD, CSMA/CD, FDDI, token ring, token bus, Bisync, and other datalink-level protocols. 

The interface specifies access to the data link service provider in the form of M_PROTO and M_PCPROTO type STREAMS messages and does not define a specific protocol implementation.  The interface defines the syntax and semantics of primitives exchanged between the data link user and the data link provider to attach a physical device with physical-level address to a stream, bind a datalink-level address to the stream, get implementation-specific information from the data link provider, exchange data with a peer data link user in one of three communication modes (connection, connectionless, acknowledged connectionless), enable/disable multicast group and promiscuous mode reception of datalink frames, get and set the physical address associated with a stream, and several other operations. 

For details on this interface refer to the <sys/dlpi.h> header and to the STREAMS DLPI Specification, 800-6915-01. 

FILES

Files in or under /dev. 

SEE ALSO

ie(7), le(7)

SunOS 5.4  —  Last change: 2 Oct 1991