kernelizing the network resolver

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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!


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