Subject: Re: IRD
To: Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang@wsrcc.com>
From: Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
List: port-i386
Date: 06/09/1999 13:50:41
>I was wondering how feasible it would be to cut some corners here.  If
>one were only interested in doing IR communication with other open
>systems (eg. NetBSD/Openbsd/Freebsd/Linux), couldn't one talk mostly
>stock async PPP out the IR port?  One would have to interlock the RX
>and TX so as to not blind one's receiver by turning on the transmitter
>in the middle of a received packet, but other than that are there any
>other caveats?

You also have a minimum amount of time you're supposed to wait to turn
around the link (which I what I think killed doing regular PPP).

The real tricky part is that both sides have to have an idea as to who
is the transmitter and who is the receiver, _and_ that they have to
switch roles every so often.  IrDA has all of the magic to deal with
that.  I think to really make PPP work, you'd almost have to invent
something like IrDA, and if you're doing that, maybe it would just be
easier to _do_ IrDA? :-)

--Ken