From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 3 May 2001 15:24:12 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 3 May 2001 15:24:03 -0400 Received: from tomcat.admin.navo.hpc.mil ([204.222.179.33]:13523 "EHLO tomcat.admin.navo.hpc.mil") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 3 May 2001 15:23:54 -0400 Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 14:23:25 -0500 (CDT) From: Jesse Pollard Message-Id: <200105031923.OAA68942@tomcat.admin.navo.hpc.mil> To: Venkateshr@ami.com, "'Alan Cox'" , Venkatesh Ramamurthy Subject: RE: [RFC] Direct Sockets Support?? Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org X-Mailer: [XMailTool v3.1.2b] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > > Define 'direct sockets' firstly. > Direct Sockets is the ablity by which the application(using sockets) > can use the hardwares features to provide connection, flow control, > etc.,instead of the TCP and IP software module. A typical hardware > technology is Infiniband . In Infiniband, the hardware supports IPv6 . For > this type of devices there is no need for software TCP/IP. But for > networking application, which mostly uses sockets, there is a performance > penalty with using software TCP/IP over this hardware. > > > I have seen several lines of attack on very high bandwidth devices. > > Firstly > > the linux projects a while ago doing usermode message passing directly > > over > > network cards for ultra low latency. Secondly there was a VI based project > > that was mostly driven from userspace. > > > The application needs to rewritten to use VIPL, but if we could > provide a sockets over VI (or Sockets over IB), then the existing > applications can run with a known environment. > > > > One thing that remains unresolved is the question as to whether the very > > low > > cost Linux syscalls and zero copy are enough to achieve this using a > > conventional socket API and the kernel space, or whether a hybrid direct > > access setup is actually needed. > > > My point is that if the hardware is capable of doing TCP/IP , we > should let the sockets layer talk directly to it (direct sockets). Thereby > the application which uses the sockets will get better performance. Doesn't this bypass all of the network security controls? Granted - it is completely reasonable in a dedicated environment, but I would think the security loss would prevent it from being used for most usage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesse I Pollard, II Email: pollard@navo.hpc.mil Any opinions expressed are solely my own.