lwip-users
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [lwip-users] Getting started with an ethernet driver for linux


From: Simon Goldschmidt
Subject: Re: [lwip-users] Getting started with an ethernet driver for linux
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:49:46 +0200

A G <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi
> I am wanting to use lwip with ethernet in linux. In a previous message
> here
> http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/lwip-users/2007-03/msg00008.html
> it says you would need to integrate the device drivers with lwip (in
> ethernetif.c I presume).
> 
> My device is an intel 82567 gigabit card and have downloaded the driver
> source for linux from intel's website. Where should I start?


lwIP under linux is most often only used from user space. This means that the 
lwIP netif driver does not talk to your real hardware but uses a pseudo network 
interface that somehow passes raw ethernet packets into the linux network 
stack. The linux network stack in turn passes them to the hardware.

This is not suited for embedded realtime applications, of course. If you wanted 
that, you'd have to run lwIP either in kernel space or as a part of an extra 
realtime kernel running below linux (so the linux kernel is like the 'idle 
thread' of the realtime kernel). The ones I know are RTAI and RTLinux and I 
think lwIP has been ported to both. However, to use lwIP with these (for 
realtime communication), you might have to write a driver for your PCI(e) 
network card, which won't be an easy thing to do.


Simon



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]