Operating systems and communication protocols

Modern operating system designs should not only offer suitable system call interfaces to the end-user application programs, but should also be able to accommodate special purpose sub-systems, such as networking software, executing in a privileged/kernel address space. Decisions involved in networking software design and implementation require a careful analysis of the features offered by the target operating environment including available communications hardware and, in particular, the host´s operating system. This paper discusses two important issues in networking software design and implementation. The first one relates to the treatment of inter-layer communication (ILC) among multiple protocol entities. If is suggested that the ILC model offers flexibility of design and reuseability if treated as a form of inter-process communication. The second issue is that of the individual layer configurability. Operating system and networking software sub-system startup procedures are inter-dependent and require a new, parametric-driven approach to configuration and generation of executable system files