Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 1 Nov 2004 02:06:41 -0800
From:      Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net>
To:        Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com>
Cc:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Efficient copying between sockets
Message-ID:  <20041101100641.GB13309@odin.ac.hmc.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20041101033406.A37052@odysseus.silby.com>
References:  <20041029123506.GG19662@mutare.noc.clara.net> <20041101033406.A37052@odysseus.silby.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

--2B/JsCI69OhZNC5r
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 03:42:52AM -0600, Mike Silbersack wrote:
>=20
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, Ollie Cook wrote:
>=20
> >Good afternoon,
> >
> >I am currently writing a potentially high bandwidth (think fileserver)
> >application which will proxy data from one PF_INET socket to another (no=
=20
> >reason
> >it has to be PF_INET, but that's how the application stands).
>=20
> >In actual fact, I know in advance exactly how many bytes need to be copi=
ed=20
> >from
> >one socket to the other, so if there was any way of doing something like:
> >
> > socket_redirect(sock_src, sock_dst, bytes_to_copy);
> >
> >it would be ideal. However I'd be very surprised if such a trivial way t=
o=20
> >do
> >that did actually exist.
> >
> >If anyone has any advice at all on a more efficient way to copy data=20
> >between
> >sockets I'd be very glad to hear about it. The software is very much=20
> >prototype
> >at the moment, but I'd like to make it as efficient as possible from the
> >beginning and this seems like a prime area for optimisation.
>=20
> Splicing bytes from one socket's buffer to another socket's buffer should=
=20
> be relatively simple to do inside the kernel, but I don't think it's=20
> implemented anywhere at this point in time.
>=20
> If you're really need that functionality, the best place to do it would=
=20
> probably be in sendfile; you could just extend it so that if two sockets=
=20
> are passed to it instead of a socket and file, it would do what you've=20
> described above.

I've thought about this on and off and think there's a good case for
such a service, however, the sendfile API is a bit too focused for some
of things you might want to do.  I would encourage any intrested person
to do a socket->socket or file->file version[0] with sendfile since it's
already there and both cases would be useful, but I think an API that
allows you to specify multiple pairs is necessicary in the general case.
Think of netcat where you want to hook stdin and stdout to a socket.

-- Brooks

[0] think cp(1) in five syscalls (open, open, sendfile, close, close).

--=20
Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529  9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4

--2B/JsCI69OhZNC5r
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBhgqwXY6L6fI4GtQRAi5GAJ91L7zIUjTJ5eFeI89inv3PECyQdACfd6C5
3tuIB4/TIdLbpAI2xAJisMc=
=sAXS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--2B/JsCI69OhZNC5r--



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20041101100641.GB13309>