From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 7 May 2001 09:42:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 7 May 2001 09:42:15 -0400 Received: from piggy.rz.tu-ilmenau.de ([141.24.4.8]:6584 "EHLO piggy.rz.tu-ilmenau.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 7 May 2001 09:42:00 -0400 Message-ID: <3AF6A697.22370520@rz.tu-ilmenau.de> Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 15:43:51 +0200 From: Alexander Eichhorn Reply-To: alexander.eichhorn@rz.tu-ilmenau.de Organization: Technical University Ilmenau X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [de] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: de,en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: [Question] Explanation of zero-copy networking Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi all, we are currently developing (as part of my dissertation) a research-platform to study some new ideas in constructing transport systems to support applications with realtime-requirements (e.g. multimedia) and new networking technologies. The test-platform consists of typical multimedia-elements, such as sources, filters, sinks and transport-modules, which can be distributed across a set of computers. To achieve the principle of sparing ressource-usage - which we consider fundamental for multimedia-systems - we are looking for new (already implemented or planned) mechanisms to avoid copying the data-streams where possible (Device-IO, especially Network-IO; User-User-IPC). That's why i'd like to ask if one of the net-core developers could give us a (more or less - depends on what you've documented so far) detailed description of the newly implemented zero-copy mechanisms in the network-stack. We are interested in how to use it (changed network-API?) and also in the internal architecture. We already had a look at the kernel mailingslist archieves and some search machines, but all we found were some fragments of the puzzle only. Before digging into the sourcecode we try this way to get an overall description. Our second question: Are there any plans for contructing a general copy-avoidance infrastructure (smth. like UVM in NetBSD does) and new IPC-mechanisms on top of it yet?? Thanks in advance. Alexander Eichhorn -- Alexander Eichhorn Technical University of Ilmenau Computer Science And Automation Faculty Distributed Systems and Operating Systems Department Phone +49 3677 69 4557, Fax +49 3677 69 4541