Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!LA.TIS.COM!crocker
From: crocker@LA.TIS.COM
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Implementing TCP/IP outside of UNIX kernel?
Message-ID: <8903301821.AA14726@trussed.la.tis.com>
Date: 30 Mar 89 18:21:39 GMT
References: <8903301431.AA19142@TIS.COM>
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Organization: The Internet
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David,

A general (and reasonably obvious) comment on your question: At the
very least, you need access to a network driver to get the data in and
out of your machine.  The connection management stuff can be
implemented as user code, but, as you suggested, may be
extraordinarily inefficient.  (Vint Cerf implemented his first version
of TCP (or perhaps NCP) this way, using one process per connection,
and the result was "of academic interest only.")

A separate but related problem is how the ordinary user processes are
going to communicate with the TCP/IP implementation.  If TCP/IP is not
available as a kernel service, then you have to connect to it via the
standard interprocess communication mechanism.  I'm not familiar with
the current IPC facilities in Unix, but somehow you'd have to set up
your TCP/IP implementation as a server.

And to answer your direct question, I'm afraid I don't know of an
implementation like this.

Zeke