Hi everyone,
Please check out http://infs.sourceforge.net for a novel INternet FileSystem (INFS) package which appears to be ideally suited to cell phones and other small devices or appliances. By pushing the DNS resolution to the kernel, INFS means to achieve the following: - eliminates sockaddr_t handling in the user space, allowing application code to become free of IPv4/IPv6 (or for that matter raw Ethernet or ATM) dependencies; - reduces the number of context switches going from application to resolver and back; - provides robust kernel multitasking for the resolution process, avoiding buggy or unsafe multithreading in application-based resolvers (like in netscape); - reduces the overall code footprint - the filesystem name tree cache is reused, sockaddr_t handling code in applications gone. This is still a pre-alpha version, sufficient only to illustrate the concept. A few system calls need to be added to completely eliminate any need for handling sockaddr_t in user space. Also, the dns response parsing can be improved - it currently gets confused with CNAME records (e.g. from www.microsoft.com), tho' it does tolerate multiple A records (e.g. from www.ibm.com). To the anonymous referees of my sigcomm submission earlier this year on the Namespace Addressing Principle: you might recognize that I was proposing INFS - but it was untried till May. the full thesis is not yet final (but the global Internet self-management algorithms hinted at are now described in the draft Annals paper at http://www.columbia.edu/~vg96/papers). I look forward to comments, education*, help... Sincerely, -prasad. ------------------ * finally a true student: no longer at ibm or anywhere!
