[rescue] IP over SCSI (was : Alpha/Sparc/NeXT/SGI to donate/sell)

[Brian Hechinger]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 03:52:13PM -0400, James Sharp wrote:
> 
> I've been a NetBSD driver writing fool these past few months...so maybe
> I'll take an initial stab at it.

it shouldn't be hard.  it's just a matter of getting it to answer requests and
whatnot.  most of it's there (as host mode) already, so it's just a matter of
"flipping it over on it's back"  i'm *SURE* i'm over simplifying it, but....

> On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, G W Adkins wrote:
> 
> > This is something that deserves it's own thread.

yes.

> > I think that IP over SCSI has excellent possibilities as a cluster
> > interconnect.

beyond that it's a great way to get fast networking on odd/old machines. take
the VAXstation 3100 for example.  there is no 100Mbit for it because it has
no expansion slots, there is nowhere to put it.  but they have two SCSI busses
in them, so you could chain a couple together (well, you are limited in what
you can set the host ID to, so we figured a ring would be a good setup) and 
hand them off of something with a fast network device, and voila, high speed
networking to machines that shouldn't be able to do that trick.

> > It would be well worth the effort to try this out, whether under NetBSD or
> > (akkk..) Linux...

i'd choose NetBSD simply for what i stated above, the usefulness of this goes
way beyond just clusteringm and definitely way beyond Linux's limited platform
support.

-brian