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OpenBSD's network stack
Federico Biancuzzi, 2005-10-12

SecurityFocus interviews three OpenBSD developers about their network stack protection against DoS ICMP attacks, a short comparison with Linux' stack, and some thoughts on OpenBGPD.

Comments Mode:
OpenBSD's network stack 2005-10-14
Anonymous (1 replies)
Re: OpenBSD's network stack 2005-10-14
Anonymous (1 replies)
Re: Re: OpenBSD's network stack 2005-10-15
Anonymous (1 replies)
OpenBSD's network stack 2005-10-14
Miguel Hernandez y Lopez
Ryan seems to be misinformed 2005-10-15
Anonymous (1 replies)
Re: Ryan seems to be misinformed 2005-10-19
Anonymous (2 replies)
Re: Re: Ryan seems to be misinformed 2005-10-20
Anonymous (1 replies)
Re: Re: Ryan seems to be misinformed 2005-10-22
Anonymous (1 replies)
"There are more than 350 GNU/Linux distributions. Most of them don't use a vanilla version of the kernel. So, please, tell me which distribution are you talking about? "

None of them, or all of them. It seems to me that you are trying to say that because there are 350 Linux distributions, and that some of them add their own patches to the kernel.org kernel, that all of them, which is Ryan's premise, are "incomplete and buggy". With such diversity of choice, if a distribution adds buggy patches to the Linux kernel then that distribution will fail very quickly due to an unhappy userbase.

My intention was not to get into a OpenBSD vs Linux argument, rather it was to state the fact that anything outside of the Linux kernel.org kernel is not an official part of the Linux networking stack, which is what Ryan does not seem to be aware of. If you're going to compare OpenBSD's networking stack with Linux's, then kernel.org stack would be the one to do it with. Again, feature by feature, they may not be the same, however that represents a difference of opinion about what are important features of a networking stack between the OpenBSD and the Linux networking developers, rather than making one better than the other.

It is easy to make Linux's networking stack "better" than OpenBSD's. Just require a feature that OpenBSD doesn't provide. Want to run Decnet ? Standard part of the Linux networking stack, doesn't appear to be available in OpenBSD (http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=decnet&sektion
=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&arch=i386&apropos=1&format=html).
Is that an unfair comparison ? Not if you want to run Decnet. Does that make Linux's networking better than OpenBSD's ? Certainly, if you want to run Decnet. Why doesn't OpenBSD support Decnet ? I'm guessing the OpenBSD developers don't consider it important to provide.



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