Checksum offloads and protocol ossification

I found the LWN article presenting those, but the only reference I have on their disposition suggests that the code never got published and remained slideware.

> In short, Linux's stack is bigger and/or slower than some alternatives because it does [much] more than those alternatives, and by the time you add $FeatureX to the alternatives it's no longer as small or fast as it used to be.

That's not an argument that the Linux stack *can't* match the size or performance of those alternatives. Given that people successfully use those alternatives, clearly $FeatureX is not essential for them.

For example, matching the size of lwIP would clearly require compiling out large parts of the stack. And matching the performance of DPDK would require large parts of the kernel to stop touching packets, and the moment you touch a packet in a way that requires additional software processing, performance properties would nosedive.