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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?"
That's easy. Windows.
mmm..mmmmm..mmmmMMHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Damn...couldn't keep a straight face. ^_^
Seriously, though, if FreeBSD is no longer king of the mountain, my vote would have to go with NetBSD (it's always been the BSDs, hasn't it?), although the term "best" is rather open-ended, and subject to serious variations of interpretation. Perhaps before we set about answering this question, we ought to decide just what we mean by "best".
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
From TFA:
Required for full three month are US$18,900 (15,600 or CHF24,000)
26. July 2005: Pair Networks, pledged US$14,000 Thank you very much!
Go Pair Networks!
Otherwise known as Aurora.
C:\>
....zzzzzz*klunk* OW!
I wonder if it's possible to sue Slashdot for posting an article summary so mind-numbingly dull that it caused some readers to fall asleep and hit their head on their desk...
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
Anybody know of a tird party TCPIP.SYS for Windows XP?
Also the http://www.lvllord.de/ patch should be mentioned here. Does anybody have any information on how information for patches like this one (i.e. how to know that TCPIP.SYS was the file to patch and where to patch it) is acquired?
I don't see how the linked document suggests the stack is sub-par. All it says is that the guy wants money to fund optimization, like PHK's done before.
If the page started with "OMG Linux is fastar than us!" then, yes. But I don't see how you reached your conclusions based on this material.
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
AmiTCP or Miami.
Nothing like paying for your tcp/ip stack, 15 years after the company who made your computer went out of business.
Video Production Support
From TFA:Hope this helps.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
In the good old days before OpenTransport and well before OSX, we had MacTCP. It was just fantastic.
Ignorance is the Agent of Fear; Fear Is the Agent of Violence - >1
- "my OS is better than yours, so therefore my stack is better".
- "I've got this obscure stack for my old/obsolete/obscure machine, so it r0x!"
- Linux, of course!
- OS X, of course!
etc..I'd be interested in seeing WHY a stack is better, and this means real data or stories like performance numbers or efficiency observations, etc.
On the other hand, machines built since 1998 have been fast enough and stacks have probably been optimized enough that we don't even notice anymore. For example, it was huge when Solaris 2.5.1 was replaced by Solaris 2.6; the stack was reworked because of "we're the dot in dot.com" web serving duties in 1997. However, those days people were still running SPARCstation 5/10/20's for their webs (read: 40MHz CPUs) and it made a difference. Today, your 500MHz+ CPUs don't really hiccup that much from stack inefficiencies. Sure, slashdot the darn box and you'll see some numbers, but the sites that are regularly hosting that kind of traffic are probably running heavier-duty machines.
My rant, anyway :-)
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Solaris 10's new stack is supposed to be the new top dog of the TCP/IP world.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
All the transmission throughput speed records are held by NetBSD. Hence, it should be fairly obvious which TCP/IP stack is the best. :) Okay, maybe not the best, but definitely the fastest.
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp
For details on the network stack improvements, start here:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/networkperf/
In most US states, about 50% would go towards various federal state and local taxes. The rest rapidly gets eaten us by food, fuel, housing, etc.
When you start making good money, its harder to live on less. When I was in college, I lived on a total of about $300/mo including rent, food, booze and entertainment. Now... its probably closer to $3000/mo for my wife and I.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The linux network stack sure ain't it. Anytime I run a connection-hungry p2p program, particularly the edonkey type, it munches so much network resources everything else starts failing to establish connections. Damn nuisance!
But they could always just change the name to Agamemnon. Aside from which, I don't think Colgate-Palmolive will be concerned unless the AJAX folks get into the dishwashing business.
Holy god, man -- what are you spending it on, and where? I live a -very- comfortable life on $1800/month, living in an apartment in Boston. I don't drive a BMW or go out to eat every day, but I could pare that down by about 50% if I wasn't paying student loans.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
No, seriously. Vista apparently has a completely rewritten network stack that's supposed to build on the work done with Windows Server 2003 (offloading work to network hardware, primarily) and was designed for IPv6 from the ground up.
How'd this guy get modded troll? I'm pretty damn sure it was a joke not a troll. :P
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Since the TCP/IP stack is only as good as the operating system it's attached to, why don't we come right out and determine, once and for all, the best operating system ever created? I think this will be a grand, insightful discussion, completely devoid of flames.
rooooar
Expenses always grow to match income ... Also I'm sure none of the above responders have kids, pay mortgages, support aging parents, etc etc
Probably opportunity cost. If he wasn't working on the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack, he could be earning as much as $6300 a month.
But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.
There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.
See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.
Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.
- Hubert
With the uIP stack. As long as best is defined as: small with a BSD licence :)
The other
Well there are things like this.
Mortgage with Taxes and insurence for me is 1000 a month.
Home maintenance is about 100 a month
2 cars I am paying 600 a month
GAS and Maintenance about 100 a month.
Food about 200 a month
Things like clothing etc are around 50 a month
So all in all that is a little over 2000 a month for me. Luckally My house is a 3 family appartment so I get rent for the other 2 units. So that essenctilly cuts my mortgage to 100 a month. But still many of these bills are paying off dept.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not difficult for expenses to add up.
High (est) Estimate
Rent: $1500
Car Payment: $600 (or two @ $300)
Car Insurance: $300
Gasoline: $250 (SUV)
Utilities: $200
Broad(band): $50
Food: $800 (eat out more)
Entertainment: $500
Student Loans: $200
Total: $4400
High(er) Estimate
Rent: $1200
Car Payment: $300 (nothing expensive)
Car Insurance: $100
Gasoline: $100
Utilities: $200
Broad(band): $50
Food: $400
Entertainment: $250
Total: $2600
Low Estimate:
Rent: $600
Car Payment: $0 (it's paid off)
Gasoline: $100
Utilities: $150
Broad(band): $50
Food: $200
Entertainment: $100
Total: $1200
These are after taxes numbers.
Now try adding in expenses for two, or kids and I can't see how anyone with kids can get by on less than $80,000US a year.
Once you figure out how the heck to get it to work you were golden. Untill you forgot again after months of using linux.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Expenses always grow to match income
No, they grow to match your lifestyle. If you're living comfortably on $1000/mo and get a new job making $2000/mo, your utility companies don't magically find out and start charging you more. Your car payment or insurance premium doesn't automatically go up. Your taxes do, but that's it. If you don't make any changes to your lifestyle, you are not paying more in expenses. In fact, with the extra money you can pay off debts sooner, which means you'll be paying less interest and therefore have even fewer expenses.
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
Mortgage+PropertyTaxes: $1300/mo
Two car payments (36mo): $600
Food: $450
Gas: $250
Misc: $400
We really don't live a lavish lifestyle... no fancy furniture or plasma TVs. We've paid off the student loans and have no credit card debt.
The house is by far the biggest expense. We have a nice house, but it was owned by old folks and needs alot maintenance.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
anonymous cowards gives flying fart. or takes. whatever, he's a coward, hiding behind anonymity. it's not 3 million country. you have your "facts" wrong, stupid.
Also consider the duty cycle, if your PC is sending out packets all in one go then maybe some of them get dropped by the router even though the avereage kb/s is without the bounds of your link.
I came across a project a while ago that sent thernet pause frames in between (which the router should drop) in order to space out the data to avoid overrunning the router buffer.
I wish I could remember what it was.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Without a doubt, DragonFlyBSD has the best TCP/IP stack. It already has all the RFC improvements that Andre wants to add. It has a correct working SACK implementation. DragonFlyBSD is a more stable faster version of FreeBSD. Why would anyone want to pay money to do what's already in DragonFlyBSD? I would encourage any FreeBSD user to just upgrade to DragonFlyBSD.
Whatever. When I (voluntarily) left my six-figure/year tech job to enlist in the Army National Guard and return to college, I took a paycut that left me with exactly 10% of my previos pay.
Yes, it was a bit of a shock but I got along just fine. In fact, I was happier than I'd ever been. No, I couldn't drive a shiny new car any longer, nor could I live in a swank 2-bedroom condo but I have enough money to get by and pay my bills.
Now that I'm out of college, I live in $2000 take-home/month and pay $800/month in student loans (the Army's "money for college" is largely bullshit, I'm afraid), but I still live very, very comfortably. $6,300/mo, even before taxes, seems a bit excessive.
Cisco. Duh.
Why should a developer capable of re-writing a TCP stack be making a subsistence living?
I could quit my job, move into a crappy apartment in the ghetto, sell my car to drive a '91 Civic and get a job at Starbucks or whatever.
But why? The work I do is worth alot to my employer, we have a 15 year home loan and modest late model cars. I'd like to keep my kids out of public school and live debt free. What's wrong with that?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Do people really pay $100 a month for gasoline?
I've never driven a car, so I don't really know, but I always thought public transportation was "more expensive" than driving. I pay $75 a month (in Chicago), but people in the suburbs can pay nearly $200 a month on train fare alone. Does this end up being cheaper than gas?
My other car is first.
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
In a talk at NZNOG earlier this year a guy from WAND in New Zealand produced some fascinating numbers comparing the various TCP/IP stacks:
5% Random Loss
Goodput(kb/s) OS
213.98 Linux 2.6.10
207.42 Linux 2.4.27
176.20 FreeBSD 5.3
162.81 FreeBSD 5.2.1
137.31 Windows XP SP2
117.98 OpenBSD
Page 13 of http://www.nznog.org/slides/wand.pdf Page 14 also has a nice graph.
Do people really pay $100 a month for gasoline?
Easily. With a 36-mile commute (1-way), 30MPG car, and gas at $2.30/gal, that's $110/month just for getting to and from work. Add in after-work and weekend driving, and there's $150. Of course most people have shorter commutes so $100 is probably a closer total for a month.
I think public transit is often less expensive than owning a car (buying the car, gas, insurance, taxes, maintainence) but it gives you a lot more flexibility. Here (Boston), the train system is pretty limited. If you miss a train outside of rush hour, you'll be waiting 30 minutes or an hour for the next one. With a car, you can go whenever you want. The layout of the rail network is single-purposed: getting into and out of Boston. Getting from a suburb on one line to a suburb on another line means going through Boston, even if the locations are close by car.
I live in Saskatoon, Canada.
For me, it's roughly (monthly):
Rent: 300$
Car payment: 0 (I buy cars for 1,000$ in cash transactions).
Gas during the winter: 180$ (-40C means I drive everywhere)
Gas during the summer: 50$ (I bike, only driving to get groceries and misc items).
Car insurance: 50$
Internet and utils: 150$
Phone: 50$ (cell phone, no landline)
Food: 120$
A bus pass is about 60$/month. The insurance is a fixed, base cost on a car, while the gas is usage based. This means my transportation is 200$/month in winter, or about 100$/month in summer. OTOH, I get to go where I want, when I want, with no nasty people along for the ride. It takes about 1/3rd the time to get there, and the biking helps keep me in shape.
Saskatoon is only ~300,000 people, though. I can cross the city on bike or car in 30 minutes.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The fundamental stupidity of this topic is the burried premise that you can go around and change your IP stack like a flavour of ice-cream. FreeBSD has *never* had a bad TCP/IP stack as far back as I know the history.
The vast majority of what makes a great carbureted engine carries forward for the transition to fuel injection: precision tolerances, metalurgy, balance, lubricant flow, etc. But until the combustion chamber is reworked for fuel injection, it won't impress anyone. In case anyone hasn't figured it out, we're talking about the dying gasp of the lamentable Pentium IV: let's run it at 20,000 rpm with a second radiator behind the trunk, then we won't have to fix anything else.
Lately, FreeBSD confesses their engine has become a little cluttered with fancy new pollution controls. Along with tweaking the fuel injectors, they are making quick work of cleaning up the superficial clutter at the same time.
In the decade between 1985 and 1995 one of the great battles in the software development industry was against the instinct of every software team to roll up their sleeves and "write it again".
This is the same idiot warmed over. No respect for fifteen years of engineering tradition, or instinct for what portion of that tradition carries forward, or the degree of difficulty involved. Would trade his Porsche for a Hyundai if some Porsche design engineer confessed some minor aspect of their technology was a little long in the tooth. But he knows how to press submit on slashdot, so he's all set in the life skills dept. Oh, brave new world that has such people in it.
I pay $40(CDN)/week on gas with gas prices where they are now.
(Actually, it's closer to 5*$40/month).
Honestly I was hoping to hear slashdotter's opinions on what is the best currently from different angles. But looks like you guys took it the wrong way.
OK. I'm in an apartment just outside of Boston. Here's my breakdown:
$750 - rent
$100 - utilities (aggregated and averaged)
$125 - car payment
$250 - car insurance payment (WTF Massachusetts!)
$125 - gasoline!
$200 - retirement fund contribution
$75 - data services (broadband, vonage, etc.)
$50 - health/dental insurance contribution
---
$1675 - total so far
I haven't even included a bunch of other little things, these are all my 'mostly inflexible' costs. Bear in mind that in those numbers I haven't had anything to eat yet or gone out at all. Uncle Sam also takes out well over one third of my gross income for federal and state taxes, social security, medicare, and car excise tax.
I suppose the only way I'd be able to cut costs would be to move to a place where I could get a roommate, which I can't really do easily while I'm waiting for my ex to take her cat back. People are cool with one cat, but there's no way in hell you can move somewhere with two.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
All the ones I worked with at my last contract ran Linux.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
My experience has been that when people make less than the given cost of living in their area, they live a similar lifestyle, but without any type of insurance, are also forced to drive illegally because it's costly to keep a cheap car up to spec.
When I first moved out of my parent's house, I moved in with two twentysomething women sharing a one-bedroom basement apartment for $500/month, they needed a third person so they could keep their (shared) car running.
I'm long gone, but one of the girls I was living with got sick (she was a brittle diabetic) and went to the hospital, she came out with a $1200 dollar bill for some diagnostics and $75 worth of insulin, that was a year and a half ago and she's still paying it off.
That being said, I did manage to live on about $350 one December when hours got really short at my work. It was a very cold, very hungry month.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
You dumbshit. What the hell would possibly convince you to voluntarily leave a 6 figure job to join the national guard? If it was college money, you could have saved an amount equal to what they are going to give you in the entire 8 years you have to enlist in about 2 months (Yes, no matter what they tell you, all enlistments to the military are for 8 years). An then you wouldn't risk dying in Iraq for no good reason. And you wouldn't have to wear a silly looking and uncomfortable uniform that is highly impractical.
Oh, AND you wouldn't have some shithead who can barely read yelling at you, calling you a dumshit, and making you do pushups until you throw up.
Personally, I have managed to convince several young patriotic americans to not join the army reserve. Unless they enjoy being treated like assholes for risking their lives and making huge sacrifices, just to see the US Government weasle out of paying promised benifits.
(ltbarcly has been in the army reserve for 7 years. He is currently pissed at them for making it impossible to recieve the student loan payments totalling $20,000 which were promised to him but not paid because of a system which intentionally makes it difficult to be paid (despite meeting all qualifications). This is called a bait and switch and is illegal in all other areas of the economy.)
I figure that I spend about $125/month on gasoline, and I drive the smallest car I could afford (a Ford Focus).
Gas costs about $2.40/gallon here now, and I've got an eleven-gallon tank that gets thirsty about once a week, sometimes more.
It's not the gas that gets you though, at least in my area. I pay $125/mo for the car itself, $125/mo on gas, $80/mo on maintainance (aggregated), and a whopping $240 for insurance. The sad thing is that I pay more than twice what anyone else I've met does for the insurance, and I've NEVER been in an accident, not even a fender-bender. I guess they figure I'm a ticking timebomb since I'm a twenty-three year-old male.
A friend of mine who has never been able to drive recently had a car given to her. I had to talk her out of registering and using it. I showed her how it would cost her at least $300/mo if she was going to use it legally here in Massachusetts.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
People continue to move here faster than the homebuilders are building new housing. There's absolutely no end in sight for that trend.
Funny, because during the great depression people were moving into California quite rapidly too, and it wasn't considered an economic boon.
I think you'll find that if interest rates go up because foreign investors stop buying dollars, a lot of people aren't going to be able to afford their mortgages anymore. When your neighbors can't afford their mortgages and new ones are being issued at 14%, the selling prices will rapidly depreciate, and the vale of YOUR house is based on the recent sale prices for houses in your neighborhood.
Beware, there's something really wrong in this country when it comes to home prices. I think it has to do with the ease of borrowing. Banks are bending over backwards trying to lend people money because they KNOW it's a winning proposition and that people are willing to take it.
In my area, you have to make four times the median household income to buy a house now, and it's getting worse every day. Everyone thinks they'll retire by selling off their homes, but nobody's going to be able to afford them unless the prices normalize.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Outside of places like New York City, San Francisco, Miami and some of the surrounding areas, I can't think of any where in the US where 50% of my income goes to federal state and local taxes (at the $6300/mo number, at least). Sure, if I'm in a top-tier income level I might be paying 40% to state and federal (and in Yonkers of NYC an additional city income tax), but even $6300/mo gross doesn't push me to that point.
antipaucity
Even in a smaller city or suburb, if you own a home property taxes can end up costing you 7-15% of your income.
You can deduct property taxes from your income taxes, of course, but it adds up. A 3bed/1bath in Nassau County, NY often pays around $16,000 in taxes. Outside of the NYC area, a typical 3bed/1.5bath house in a decent neighborhood of a distressed upstate city like Schenectady pays $4,000-$5,000 (on an assessed value of ~$65,000).
I'm not even factoring in sales & excise taxes, which are very significant and nearly impossible to track.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You are joking, aren't you? Aren't you? Good God, man; that's insane. I pay $2500 on ~$195,000 and thought I was getting ripped off. My father-in-law lives in Buffalo, NY, and is always going on about all the "free" services that he gets from the gov'ment like trash pickup. I have to pay to have my trash hauled, but since I guess I'm saving about $10,000 per year in taxes, I can live with it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I wish I was. Schenectady is a bad example... its like New York's Detriot.
In the 50's it had a population of about 120,000 the main General Electric plant, GE Corporate HQ and a railroad locomotive factory. GE alone employed 50,000, mostly skilled tradesmen. Today GE Power Systems is barely running with about 2,500 folks.
I live in a suburb of Albany, and my school & property taxes are just under $5,000/yr. I pay for garbage and water too.
Why so high?
States like NY have high taxes because of numerous and large local government. NY state government is huge, and there are over 3,500 towns, villages, cities and counties. Each entity had a paid board, supervisor/mayor/etc and many have overlapping police forces. My home is near the state university, and is within the jurisdiction of five seperate police forces. The average state policeman makes $80k/yr and retires after 20 years at half pay.
Schools are also expensive. The average teacher's salary is around $55k and teachers retire making $75k. Some states, even in the northeast, pay civil servants far less.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I spend over $200 a month in gas (but I drive 160 miles a day, round trip, to work and back).
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Yeah and the sweet part is that people from Germany cross the Swiss border to fill up because gas is so cheap there!
On the other hand, my GF recently switched jobs from Germany to Switzerland because the pay (for about 15% more work) is more than double, and the taxes are lower. And the bureucracy is less.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism