Kernel-bypass networking for fun and profit

Matthew Chapman
http://linux.conf.au/schedule/present...
In the quest for ever lower networking latencies, there are a growing number of kernel-bypass TCP/IP stacks available from various network card vendors: for example Exablaze's exasock, Solarflare's OpenOnload, Mellanox's VMA, Myricom's DBL and Chelsio's WireDirect. All of these use the LD\_PRELOAD mechanism to hijack AF\_INET socket calls and direct them to a library and ultimately the network adapter. Some are entirely implemented in userspace, while others have in-kernel support components that allow more graceful connection handling across processes. In this talk I will discuss the how and why of these stacks, with a particular focus on the exasock stack developed by my team at Exablaze.