Solaris Fire Engine.

[pesch at attglobal.net]

In a cluster, would it not make more sense to catch an attack in a firewall rather than at the kernel level? If
so, should cluster builders  perhaps look for other - more cluster specific - kernels? Should kernel development
at some point split in two distinct lines: one for single computer applications and one for clusters?

Paul Schenker

Donald Becker wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, Mof wrote:
>
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33440.html
> >
> > ... "We worked hard on efficiency, and we now measure, at a given network
> > workload on identical x86 hardware, we use 30 percent less CPU than Linux."
>
> Linux uses much more CPU per packet than it used to.  The structural
> change for IPtable/IPchains capability is very expensive, even when it
> is not used.  And there have been substantial, CPU-costly changes to protect
> against denial-of-service attacks at many levels.  The only protocol
> stack changes that might benefit cluster use are sendfile/zero-copy, and
> that doesn't apply to most current hardware or typical cluster message
> passing.
>
> I would be technially easy to revert to the interface of old Linux
> kernels and see much better than a 30% CPU reduction, but it's very
> unlikely that would happen politically: Linux development is
> feature-driven, not performance-driven.  And that's easy to understand
> when your pet feature is at stake, or there is a news story of "Linux
> Kernel Vulnerable to <obscure attack #452844>".
>
> --
> Donald Becker                           becker at scyld.com
> Scyld Computing Corporation             http://www.scyld.com
> 914 Bay Ridge Road, Suite 220           Scyld Beowulf cluster system
> Annapolis MD 21403                      410-990-9993
>
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