OLS: A proposal for a new networking API

OLS: A proposal for a new networking API

I'm curious what a new, socket-replacing API would look like.

open("/net/localhost/http", O_RDWR, 0)

Maybe this is not quite what you were asking for :-) . Of course, it's inspired by Plan 9. Using this, or using the socket calls, you get back the same object: a file descriptor. I think socket calls come from BBN's ARPA-sponsored Unix TCP/IP implementation, filtered through Berkeley BSD. They are indeed non-Unix-like, as are the net devices which live in their own unique name space.

Once you get the FD, you can call magic DMA functions on it as Ulrich proposes, which should be valid for plain files, not just network devices. Sometimes, however, what you need to do will fit the simpler sendfile().

Bruce

The (a) problem with
   open("/net/localhost/http", O_RDWR, 0)
type approaches is that they combine "socket" and "connect" into one
call, and so there is no room for doing anything in between like bind
or setsockopt.  Those things aren't always needed, but sometimes they are.

You could try
  open("/net/local/http:bind=1023;sourceaddr=xx.xx.xx.xx;tcp_syncnt=5")
but I don't think you would get very far.

Unfortunately IPC is simply very different from for file IO and trying
to use the same API will be a problem.  Having an open_url library call
is about the best you can do.