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0 pointsdark-star7mo ago0 comments

Yeah, I was really confused when I learned that every device was simply a file in /dev, except the network interfaces. I never understood why there is no /dev/eth0 ...

That was back in the mid-90s but even today I still don't understand why network interfaces are treated differently than other devices

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simonh7mo ago

It's probably because ethernet and early versions of what became TCP/IP were not originally developed on Unix, and weren't tied to it's paradigms, they were ported to it.

MisterTea7mo ago

Plan 9 does exactly this but all networking protocols live in /net - ethernet, tcp, udp, tls, icmp, etc. The dial string in the form of "net!address!service" abstracts the protocol from the application. A program can dial tcp!1.2.3.4!7788 or maybe udp!1.2.3.4!7788. How about raw Ethernet? /net/ether1!aabbccddeeff!12345. The dial(2) routine takes a dial string and returns an fd you read() and write(). Very simple networking API.

mixmastamyk7mo ago

What would it mean to write to a network interface? Blast everyone as multicast? Not that useful. But Plan9 had connections as files, though I’ve never tried.

dark-starOP7mo ago

That's a bad argument. What does it mean to write to a mouse device? To the audio mixer? To the i2c bus device? To a raw SCSI device (scanner or whatever)? Those are all not very useful either.

Especially since there actually is a very useful thing that writing to /dev/eth0 would do: Put a raw frame on the wire, and reading from it would read raw frames.

mixmastamyk7mo ago

You haven't thought through what you're asking. That's the bad argument. Network packets are not viable without a destination address. Nor does anyone want unaddressed (garbage) packets on their network.

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0 pointsdark-star7mo ago0 comments

Yeah, I was really confused when I learned that every device was simply a file in /dev, except the network interfaces. I never understood why there is no /dev/eth0 ...

That was back in the mid-90s but even today I still don't understand why network interfaces are treated differently than other devices

0 comments

simonh7mo ago

It's probably because ethernet and early versions of what became TCP/IP were not originally developed on Unix, and weren't tied to it's paradigms, they were ported to it.

MisterTea7mo ago

mixmastamyk7mo ago

What would it mean to write to a network interface? Blast everyone as multicast? Not that useful. But Plan9 had connections as files, though I’ve never tried.

dark-starOP7mo ago

That's a bad argument. What does it mean to write to a mouse device? To the audio mixer? To the i2c bus device? To a raw SCSI device (scanner or whatever)? Those are all not very useful either.

Especially since there actually is a very useful thing that writing to /dev/eth0 would do: Put a raw frame on the wire, and reading from it would read raw frames.

mixmastamyk7mo ago

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