SunOS STREAMS-based device drivers wishing to support the STREAMS TCP/IP and other STREAMS-based networking protocol suite implementations support Version 2 of the Data Link Provider Interface ("DLPI"). DLPI V2 enables a data link service user to access and use any of a variety of conforming data link service providers without special knowledge of the provider's protocol. Specifically, the interface is intended to support Ethernet, X.25 LAPB, SDLC, ISDN LAPD, CSMA/CD, FDDI, token ring, token bus, Bisync, and other datalink-level protocols.

The interface specifies access to the data link service provider in the form of M_PROTO and M_PCPROTO type STREAMS messages and does not define a specific protocol implementation. The interface defines the syntax and semantics of primitives exchanged between the data link user and the data link provider to attach a physical device with physical-level address to a stream, bind a datalink-level address to the stream, get implementation-specific information from the data link provider, exchange data with a peer data link user in one of three communication modes (connection, connectionless, acknowledged connectionless), enable/disable multicast group and promiscuous mode reception of datalink frames, get and set the physical address associated with a stream, and several other operations.

For details on this interface refer to the <sys/dlpi.h> header and to the STREAMS DLPI Specification, 800-6915-01.

Files in or under /dev.

le(7D), hme(7D), ge(7D), qfe(7D), gld(7D)

Streams drivers for network interface cards (NIC) must meet the following driver name constraints:

• Length -- Name cannot exceed 16 characters. Names containing three to eight characters are preferred.
• Legal Characters -- Legal characters are: alphanumeric (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), and the underscore ('_'). Additionally, the first and/or last character of a name cannot be a digit.