HP-UX Reference (11i v1 05/09) - 7 Device (Special) Files, 9 General Information, Index (vol 10)

lan(7) lan(7)

NAME

lan - network I/O card access information

DESCRIPTION

This manual entry gives a brief description on how to access the LAN device driver at Layer 2 (Data Link

Layer) of the OSI architecture. The LAN device driver controls the various LAN interface cards (e.g,

Ethernet/IEEE 802.3, FDDI, Token Ring) at Layer 1 (Physical Layer).

The Data Link Provider Interface (DLPI) is the supported method for accessing the LAN device driver at

Layer 2. DLPI is intended for use by knowledgeable network users only. Refer to the DLPI Programmer’s

Guide for complete programming details.

There are HP and non-HP drivers and interface cards which will provide their own DLPI module. These

types of DLPI are referred to as ‘‘native’’ DLPI.

Overview

The Physical Point of Attachment (PPA) is a numerical value that uniquely identiﬁes a particular device.

The PPA value can be obtained from the

lanscan command. The ‘‘NamePPA’’ identiﬁer in the

lanscan

output is a concatenation of the interface name and the PPA number. The

card instance value for a

lan device is equivalent to the PPA number for that device.

A single hardware device may have multiple ‘‘NamePPA’’ identiﬁers, which indicates multiple encapsulation

methods supported for to the device. For Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 links, the ‘‘Name’’

lan is used to designate

Ethernet encapsulation, and

snap

for IEEE 802.3 encapsulation. For other links (FDDI, Token Ring),

only the

lan encapsulation designation is used.

Methods of transfer over the DLPI interface through the lan devices include ‘‘raw’’, ‘‘connectionless’’, and

‘‘connection-oriented’’ data transfers.

WARNING

The Link Level Access (LLA) interface is obsolete.

AUTHOR

lan was developed by HP.