Re: [boost] sockets /network programming Requirements

From: Iain.Hanson_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-07-31 09:19:18

     Hi Folks,
     
     Thanks for all the replys. I'm not going to try to respond to each one 
     but the following are some general points.
     
     It's amazing ( at least to me ) how much implementation detail comes 
     from posting a 'Requirements' document! ;-).
     
     In terms of general direction, the layered approach I have outlined is 
     very similar to ACE and I would expect there to be many other 
     similarities. Although, I would also expect there to be substancial 
     differences as well.
     
     I'm not a MS Windows  expert but not a newbie either, so I appreciate 
     the discussion of Windows event de-multiplexing. This is an area I 
     will need to look into but my initial thoughts are that it sounds like 
     a boost library may need to allow this to be a strategy, just as the 
     use of select or poll could be a strategy. My original thought was 
     just to use WaitForMultipleObjects.
     
     Protocol.
     
     The requirements currently say that the library should be ( 
     predominantly ) restricted to IPv4 & IPv6. I would expect the initail 
     implementation to be based on IPv4 as the is the most used of network 
     protocols. However, it would be a mistake IMO, to not take other main 
     stream but less popular protocols into account, for the requirements 
     and design. C++ and its libraries have, as far as I can see, always 
     attempted to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Excluding other 
     protocols from consideration in the requirements and design is likely 
     to be detremental to the generality of such a design and is some what 
     akin to saying we'll exclude the requirements for real-time systems 
     because thay are not main stream.
     
     Protocols that I believe should *at least* be considered in the design 
     are: OSI, SS7, and ATM. If anyone has any additions to this list, I'd 
     be interested to here them.
     
     In addition to exception saftey, this library needs to be thread safe 
     by design. This means that in order to follow the C++ principle of 
     'you only pay for what you use', we will need a null_mutex fro boost 
     threads.
     
     /ikh
     

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