Why is the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack the best?

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 09:20:35AM -0700, Ed Flecko wrote:
> One of the common discussions of different OSes are their own
> implementations of the TCP/IP stack. Most of the authors seem to agree
> that while different OSes have their pros and cons, most seem to agree
> that in terms of pure, network performance, no OS is better that
> FreeBSD!
> 
> O.K., now you've got my curiosity...
> 
> 1.) Do you agree?

What is the definition of best? I've saturated a 100 Mbps network link between
two FreeBSD machines using nc(1) without the CPU's breaking a sweat. So it's
definitely Good Enough wrt speed. And I don't see many dropped packets or
errors.

However it does not follow that there aren't other operating systems capable
of the same.

And it depends to a significant degree on the network hardware. Intel and 3com
cards tend to work much better than e.g. Realtek. And a dodgy cable will ruin
your day connection wise.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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