Study: comparing free and proprietary network stacks [LWN.net]

Study: comparing free and proprietary network stacks

Posted Feb 11, 2003 16:39 UTC (Tue) by bryn (guest, #1482)
Parent article: Study: comparing free and proprietary network stacks

So presumably these 8 defects can be patched for the next kernel release, and Linux would then be the only example of a zero-defect stack....

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Study: comparing free and proprietary network stacks

Posted Feb 11, 2003 17:08 UTC (Tue) by robertbrooks (guest, #9557) [Link] (1 responses)

as always FITNR ;o)

It really depends on the nature of the "bugs" they've found in Linux's tcp/ip implementation.

Occasionally I've seen the kernel hackers argue about what it the correct way of handling a given situation on linux-kernel. The choices generally comes down to pragmatism (ie what works best in the real world) and interoperability. Going against standards isn't necessarily the issue though some may argue the standard says one thing it often comes down to interpretation.

It wouldn't suprise me if some of the points they see as bugs are deliberate features of a well tested and working (in the real world) tcp/ip stack.

Study: comparing free and proprietary network stacks

Posted Feb 11, 2003 17:36 UTC (Tue) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

Judging from the text of the PR, they are not comparing the stacks' behavior against the RFCs; they are just analyzing the code itself, and detecting such mistakes as using values of uninitialized variables. The defects they find are real, even when they don't necessarily result in noticeable bugs; any small change to the code might change that too. One problem with this process is that it produces false positives, which take engineering attention to winnow out.

Probably a big part of the reason Linux comes out ahead here is that a similar process is already being applied to Linux code by those lunatics at Stanford. One benefit to being important Free Software is that it becomes practical and worthwhile to apply this kind of attention, for graduate credit. Linux really is a part of the academic literature, and benefits correspondingly from the academic attention. (BSD, too, of course, and for much longer.)