networking support

[Joe Armstrong]

On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> As far as I can see (but I may have missed things), the built-in 
> networking support for Erlang is for TCP/IP and UDP. How easy 
> would it be to implement support for other protocols? Hopefully the 
> networking functionality is modular enough to enable some kind of 
> plug-and-play... or isn't it?
> 
> Thanks.
> /Vlad
> 

   Yes it is modular - certain predefined messages are delivered
to net_kernel.erl when messages are received etc. HOW the messages
get there TCP/IP etc. is not defined. The kernel libraries were
completely rewritten to make it easy to support other protocols.

   Saying that it's modular does not mean it's easy! - naming issues
and supporting multiple protocols requires a fairly deep knowledge
of the system.

   Conceptually its easy - we have no shared memory etc. All
Erlang messages are mapped to the external term format and
shipped with any available byte transport mechanism.

   If you want to do this yourself post to this group first -
you'll probably need to chat to one of the guys who did
the network code.

  /Joe 
--
Joe Armstrong,                       
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