Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Thu, 3 May 2001 14:23:25 -0500 (CDT) | From | Jesse Pollard <> | Subject | RE: [RFC] Direct Sockets Support?? |
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> > 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
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