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Implementing network protocols at user level

Authors:

Chandramohan A. Thekkath,

Edward D. LazowskaAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCOMM '93: Conference proceedings on Communications architectures, protocols and applications

Pages 64 - 73

https://doi.org/10.1145/166237.166244

Published: 01 October 1993 Publication History

Abstract

Traditionally, network software has been structured in a monolithic fashion with all protocol stacks executing either within the kernel or in a single trusted user-level server. This organization is motivated by performance and security concerns. However, considerations of code maintenance, ease of debugging, customization, and the simultaneous existence of multiple protocols argue for separating the implementations into more manageable user-level libraries of protocols. This paper describes the design and implementation of transport protocols as user-level libraries.We begin by motivating the need for protocol implementations as user-level libraries and placing our approach in the context of previous work. We then describe our alternative to monolithic protocol organization, which has been implemented on Mach workstations connected not only to traditional Ethernet, but also to a more modern network, the DEC SRC ANI. Based on our experience, we discuss the implications for host-network interface design and for overall system structure to support efficient user-level implementations of network protocols.

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Cited By

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Index Terms

Implementing network protocols at user level
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Performance
2. Networks
  1. Network protocols
    1. Network protocol design
  2. Network types
    1. Packet-switching networks

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Reviews

Reviewer: Greg Minshall

In this implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite, basic packet demultiplexing occurs in the kernel of the host operating system, but the protocol processing proper occurs in libraries that are co-resident with the application using a given TCP connection. This approach is part of the overall microkernel thrust in operating systems, in which more and more of the operating system is placed in user-level processes. In previous work on TCP/IP and microkernels, the protocol processing and demultiplexing were placed in one user-level process, the application using TCP/IP in another, and the actual hardware device drivers (for the network card) in the kernel. Relative to this previous work, the current work shows performance improvements. Relative to having the protocols reside in a monolithic kernel, the current work continues to show performance degradation. An alternative style of kernel structuring, where the protocol processing and demultiplexing occur in the kernel protection domain, but in a separate module, is not discussed. Of related interest is Maeda and Bershad's paper [1].

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCOMM '93: Conference proceedings on Communications architectures, protocols and applications

October 1993

299 pages

ISBN:0897916190

DOI:10.1145/166237

Chairman:
Imrich Chlamtac

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume 23, Issue 4
Oct. 1993
288 pages
ISSN:0146-4833
DOI:10.1145/167954
Editor:
David Oran
Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton, MA
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1993 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 October 1993

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SIGCOMM93: Symposium, Communication, Architectures and Protocols

September 13 - 17, 1993

California, San Francisco, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 462 of 3,389 submissions, 14%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3132747.3132780
Zhan XBao YBienia CLi K(2017)PARSEC3.0ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News10.1145/3053277.305327944:5(1-16)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3053277.3053279
Belay APrekas GPrimorac MKlimovic AGrossman SKozyrakis CBugnion E(2016)The IX Operating SystemACM Transactions on Computer Systems10.1145/299764134:4(1-39)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2997641
Pathak SPai VBarham PKrishnamurthy A(2015)ModNetProceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on Networked Systems Design and Implementation10.5555/2789770.2789800(425-438)Online publication date: 4-May-2015
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Kuang JWaddington DLin C(2015)Techniques for fast and scalable time series traffic generationProceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data)10.1109/BigData.2015.7363747(105-114)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2015
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Penoff BWagner ATuxen MRungeler I(2012)Portable and Performant Userspace SCTP Stack2012 21st International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN)10.1109/ICCCN.2012.6289222(1-9)Online publication date: Jul-2012
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Zhang XBuck RZappala D(2011)Experimental Performance Evaluation of ATP in a Wireless Mesh NetworkProceedings of the 2011 IEEE Eighth International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Systems10.1109/MASS.2011.25(122-131)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2011
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