Re: PROPOSAL: making liblinux_net library

[Farid Hajji]

>     Farid> Look at netgraph(4) in FreeBSD:
> 
>     Farid>
>     Farid> 
> http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=netgraph&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+4.4-stable&format=html
> 
>     Farid> It looks like an interesting and probably portable way to
>     Farid> achieve what you're looking for.
> 
> Well, this thing looks great. But it isn't exactly what I'm thinking
> about.
> 
netgraph(4) is just a framework that builds on top of Net/3.
Of course, you'll still need to port Net/3 (as well as recent
enhancements like KAME (IPv6), IPsec etc...) to the Hurd.

Actually, cutting out Net/3+KAME+IPsec of the FreeBSD kernel
is not so difficult. Of course, you'll need to familiarize
yourself with the basic Net/3 implementation, e.g. by reading:

  TCP/IP Illustrated , Volume 2: The Implementation
  Gary R. Wright, Richard W. Stevens
  Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series
  ISBN 0-201-63354-X.

Then you'll need to understand how Net/3 interacts with
the kernel to avoid being interrupted in critical regions
(you need to provide alternative implementations to the spl*()
locking functions). You may want to multithread the Net/3 code,
but that would be a PhD-thesis of its own ;-)

BTW, a BSD-based pfinet is highly desired, mainly because of um-pppd.
Recent changes in the FreeBSD Net/3 (especially the netgraph(4)
infrastructure [e.g. ng_pppoe], KAME, ...) influenced 'ppp' so
much, that it would be very hard to synchronize FreeBSD ppp with the
Hurd version in the forseeable future.

Good luck!

> 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

-Farid.

-- 
Farid Hajji -- Unix Systems and Network Admin | Phone: +49-2131-67-555
Broicherdorfstr. 83, D-41564 Kaarst, Germany  | farid.hajji@ob.kamp.net
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