Background: Network Stack Overview

• A very large and complex kernel subsystem

  • Well over one million lines of code
    • And that's excluding device drivers, distributed file systems, and other significant abusers!
  • Hundreds of significant data structures, abstractions, and APIs
  • Implemented/grown over 20+ years

• Very performance-sensitive

  • Low latency and overhead critical
  • But, potentially a big winners from SMPng