Re: CAN bus netboot

[markus@infoscape.com]

Antonio Latorre writes:
 > I am a newbie to this newsgroup, so I beg your pardon if I am asking
 > something stupid or out of the topic, but here it goes:
 > Do you know if there is a way (f possible multiboot compliant) to boot a
 > diskless PC through a bus CAN board?. Is there any code or pointer I can
 > look out?. Is there anybody out there who have done this?

I am not aware of any software that does this, but there is no good
reason why you shouldn't be able to write an adapter for etherboot to
allow booting from a CAN bus. More interesting is the question of
which protocol you are going to use. I have never programmed any CAN
applications and you should probably take everything I say with a
grain of salt, but to the best of my knowledge the CAN bus does not
natively support IP protocols. You might be able to encapsulate IP
within CAN frames (who knows, there might even be a standard for doing
this), though there might be a limitation on the MTU, which would
impose some severe overhead on the protocol. You will probably also
have to implement a new IP-on-CAN network driver for your server. What 
is the transfer speed of CAN nowadays?


Markus

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Markus Gutschke                         Internet: markus@infoscape.com
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