Re: PROPOSAL: making liblinux_net library

[Peter Novodvorsky]

Hi, Thomas!

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Bushnell, BSG <tb@becket.net> writes:

    Thomas> Peter Novodvorsky <nidd@alt-linux.org> writes:
    >> 1). I propose to move all linux code out of pfinet and make
    >> separated library with linux ip stack.

    Thomas> This is not a horrible idea, and I once thought of doing
    Thomas> the same thing myself.

    Thomas> However, two things block the idea:

    Thomas> 1) The amount of Hurd specific code in pfinet is really
    Thomas> quite small, and any changes to the Linux code would
    Thomas> require rethinking some of the Hurd code.  Moving the Hurd
    Thomas> code into a library wouldn't really change it all that
    Thomas> much; it would still be necessary to change it anytime the
    Thomas> Linux code changes materially.

So what can be done -- is to make some good interface in this
library. It should generic enough for being applied to BSD ip stack
too.

In fact I'm thinking about pfinet reimplementation, but it can be done
after making this library. I forgot to post link to the article, but
probably most of you read it:
http://island.po.cs.msu.su/~nidd/maeda93protocol.pdf
(Original postscript file from ftp.cs.cmu.edu contains picture that
was unparseable by my ghostscript and probably unparseable by yours.)
I ask you to read it and say what you think about it. 
It requires inserting some parts of network code into kernel, but it
gives more speed.

Another paper I'll probably look at is 
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/426933.html
It is talking about I/O oriented IPC that i didn't understand still.

    Thomas> 2) A much better thing is just a real native
    Thomas> implementation.

native implementation is long term. When I proposed to cut down
currently unused things in this linux code, I thought of it as start
of adopting this code. AFAIR, linux started with BSD tcp/ip
implementation and then evolutioned to current state.

Thanks,
-- 
Peter Novodvorsky                        Deadheads, unite!
Moscow State University, CS dept.           nidd@cs.msu.su
Debian Project                             nidd@debian.org
ALT Linux Team, Russia                  nidd@alt-linux.org