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Networking

Introduction

TIPC (Transparent Inter Process Communication) is a protocol that was originally developped at Ericsson.  
Today TIPC is in the Linux kernel since 2.6.16, and in VxWorks.
This project is the porting of the Linux version of TIPC to OpenSolaris.  
 
Linux, Solaris and VxWorks versions of TIPC can be found on the TIPC web site.

Additionaly, Solaris SPARC and x86 packages are available on this site, here.
 

Overview

TIPC provides a logical network topology where nodes are grouped in clusters, and clusters are grouped in zones.
Some features of TIPC include :
- the location transparency of services in a network.
- an auto-discovery mechanism.
- a reliable transport.
- Connectionless, connection-oriented and multicast messaging.
- a socket interface for user-land applications with a new socket address family AF_TIPC.

Applications in a TIPC network typically communicate with one another by sending messages between communication endpoints called "ports".
When an application creates a port, this port will have a unique ID within the TIPC zone.
To provide location transparency, the application creating a port can bind a "port name" to this port, and specify the level of visibility or "scope" of this port :
- zone scope,
- cluster scope,
- or node scope.
TIPC then ensures that only applications within that portion of the network (i.e. the same node, the same cluster, or the same zone) can access the port using that name.

Documentation

The documentation (Reference, Programming guide,...) is available on the TIPC web site.

Related OpenSolaris Project

Volo  

The port of TIPC on OpenSolaris, which requires to define a new socket address family, will be done without any change to the OpenSolaris kernel source code by relying on the Pluggable Socket Framework provided by the Volo OpenSolaris Project.

Status

29 Jan 2008 Development in progress. Prototype available very soon.

12 Mar 2008 Development almost finished. Packages will be available very soon.

13 Mar 2008 Porting (beta quality) of TIPC module finished, some examples still need to be ported. Packages should be available in a few days on the TIPC website.

19 Jun 2008 TIPC 1.7.5 for Solaris and OpenSolaris released.

8 Jul 2008 TIPC 1.7.6-rc1 for Solaris and OpenSolaris released.