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Best TCP/IP Stack Implementation?

Posted by Cliff on from the and-the-winner-is dept.

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?"

5 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. In the context of what ? by johnjones · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  2. Re:Ooooh! Mystery conclusions! by m_chan · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  3. that's easy! it's MacTCP! by he1icine · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  4. Battle of the Stacks by bjb · · Score: 4, Interesting
    OK, how quickly is this turning into one of the following:
    1. "my OS is better than yours, so therefore my stack is better".
    2. "I've got this obscure stack for my old/obsolete/obscure machine, so it r0x!"
    3. Linux, of course!
    4. 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...
  5. Windows Vista? by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.