[LAU] AVB on linux: drivers?

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On 05/15/2017 09:38 PM, Len Ovens wrote:
> On Tue, 16 May 2017, Bearcat Şándor wrote:
>
>> On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 6:49 PM Len Ovens <len at ovenwerks.net> wrote:
>>       about either one... but the first thing about both is that they
>> are a
>>       collection of standards many of which we already have. The second
>>       thing is
>>       that to make good use of AVB requires the right ethernet card as
>>       well. It
>>       is possible to use AVB to transfer between two linux computers
>> (jack
>>       to
>>       jack) but requires manual setup to get it going. I don't know how
>>       well
>>
>> inclusion.   I just discovered that the card that i'm looking at
>> states that
>> "in-kernel drivers will be released", which gives me hope that i won't
>> have to
>> keep gatherig modules for old kernel versions,
>> That was the sum of my thoughts on it really.
>
> What Linux needs for network audio interfaces, is a GUI that "does it
> all". Some thing that ties the jack dummy backend to the ethernet cards
> timer. Something that shows all available streams and allows the user to
> connect a remote stream to the linux box and open it as a client in jack
> and connect it to whatever jack port the user asks. Simple.... we can't
> even use two audio cards on the same machine via a GUI... Ya, USB mics
> are a thing.
>
> Some might say "do it with ALSA" and maybe that is right too.... but I
> think jack is the right tool for this. It already thinks about routing
> from anywhere to anywhere which is what networked audio is about.
>
> This is what makes the MOTU devices so interesting. They give one an AVB
> endpoint that is not totally useless while figuring out AVB cause it can
> be used as a USB 2.0 device right now.

Yup.

The plan I was contemplating was to first try to implement a minimal 
jack client that could access AVB streams (if AVB is sync'ed to the 
Linux computer). Why? Because I already wrote a small jack client[*] 
that uses the network to feed packets to 1/2 of a network snake box, and 
I have used it for years as a "cheap" A/D and D/A "card". So maybe (just 
maybe) this would be easier than the next more desirable option which 
would be:

Code a full AVB jack backend :-)
How hard can that be??

But I have never found the time to begin exploring this...
-- Fernando

[*] https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~nando/publications/jack_mamba_lac2012.pdf