TCP... the truth will be revealed

I have long before recognized that the current network stack in HelenOS is messed up beyond repair and trying to fix it anymore is a waste of time. Since it's been two years after the master thesis was defended and we still do not have something that would work, it might not be well received by others if I threw everything out and started from zero, though.

So I started with a complete rewrite of TCP. This is arguably the only more complex / non-trivial module in the stack and the part that is obviously most broken.

Despite lack of spare time I have now a new TCP module that is not 100% complete, but complete enough so that it could be test-run against itself over the wire. I implemented it as a completely independent server that has nothing in common with the current networking stack. I tested the functionality using internal loopback in the TCP module and internal clients.

Yesterday I started hooking it into the current network stack, the idea is to create a minimal connector between the two components. After three hours of work there is still some way to go before I can successfully send/receive PDUs to/from IP (I haven't started with the socket interface yet).

During this work I had the chance to fully 'appreciate' the quirks and complexities of the network stack. IP understands sockets and TCP pseudo headers. TCP knows about IP headers and network devices. But who cares about layers or separation of concerns, right?

Since quite a few people claimed that the remainder of the network stack actually works -- to some degree -- I wonder whether I get something at least remotely useful when I plug my TCP implementation into the stack. The truth will be revealed. And then I can maybe throw the rest of the rubbish out.