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Best TCP/IP Stack Implementation?
paultantk asks: "This mailing list suggests that the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack is sub-par. It was the best in the 90's, but not anymore. So the question is, which operating system now holds the title for the best TCP/IP stack implementation?"
you have to put things in context
security ? - OpenBSD / NetBSD / Linux
performance ? - MS Windows 2003 / Linux / FreeBSD
(windows has been showen to support very nice acceleration card NAPI on linux has been showen 2.6 kernel slower than 2.4 at the recent kernel summit and freeBSD is still up there on exsisting hardware the rewrite is about supporting new models )
Portability ? NetBSD / Linux / OpenBSD
context is everything
regards
John Jones
To compare, $6300 is roughly how much a person living on SSI disability in the U.S has to live on in a year. What really reeks is that in many areas in the U.S. many disabled people have an education of Associates Degrees or better but can't get the support they need to work or even find a job. Then sometimes there are no jobs in the area and there's no way to move or figure out where to move to.
Agreed, I don't read that post to say that described the stack as "sub par".
I did notice something interesting. If you look through the sponsorships he received, a significant amount ($14,000) was pledged was by Pair Networks. They are one of the larger hosting providers in the U.S. and hundreds FreeBSD servers at their data center in Pittsburgh. It is unlikely that they would grant 14 stacks of high society at something they did not research and find to be of direct benefit. I am not an employee of Pair, but I have been a customer for seven years.
By the way, Pair's Mirrors are quite handy.
Well... it is in that Pair Networks are far from the biggest network (webhosting, in their context) company, yet they are contributing something which will be released under the BSD licence, hence truely free... and will be of benefit to all both large and small. So yes it is alturism but in a form which also benefits themselves, as all great alturism should do (spreading good amongst all should benefit yourself, however directly or indirectly).
So I say GO PAIR NETWORKS!
To me the best network stack is one that can handle many simultaneous open sockets without problems. Performance is of secondary importance after robustness. I understand a stack will at least stall out when it tries to do more than the hardware can support, but it should pick right back up where it left off when sufficient resources are available again.
I love Linux, and I've standardized on it as my platform of choice, but I have run into some problems with 2.4's network stack when >1000 sockets were simultaneously open and active, problems that don't go away until the system is rebooted. I've devised workarounds, but I'd rather not.
I still need to stress-test 2.6 .. been putting it off because I don't trust early minor-revision releases, they tend to be buggy. But from what I've read it's about ready for consideration.
But is there something better? What is the most scalable, reliable TCP/IP stack out there? Is there something that will let me open 10,000 sockets and hammer at them all at once without coming apart like wet tissue paper?
Since I'm going to be stress-testing 2.6, I'll probably do FreeBSD and Solaris10 at the same time. Does anyone have other contenders to suggest? Not necessarily something that screams like a mofo on one socket or five, but rather something that will never, ever misbehave.
-- TTK