[Ns-developers] Comment on the new architecture document (May 20th)

[Emmanuelle Laprise]

I really like the changes that were made to the Node, NetDevice and 
Channel sections. These are much clearer and easier to understand than 
in the previous version.

It says that a NetDevice interfaces to layer 3 protocols, but I would 
like it to be possible for it to interface to layer 2 protocol. This is 
because I would like to have a node act as an ethernet bridge or switch. 
This would require, I think, that the NetDevice does the layer 1 
protocol, but that the node itself implements the layer 2 protocols (ie 
802.1D/Q type of functionality) with possibly some layer 3 
functionality.  This will also require that the node implement some 
buffering and queues. All types of queues can't be implemented in the 
net devices because if you want to model VOQ (virtual output queues) and 
VIQ (virtual input queues), you need to be able to share the queues 
between multiple net devices.

Any thoughts on whether the architecture currently supports this? Is it 
just a question of semantics, ie it says that the node processes at 
layer 3, but there is not reason that it could not also do some layer 2 
processing?

In section 3.4.1, there is a spelling mistake -- "receive" is mispelt as 
"recieve".

Emmanuelle