Yes :) .

I don't know anything about networking protocols, really... I think I'm going to work on various CLI utilities for different things.

Hi, There are 3 layers Ethernet-->IP-->TCP You forget one thing, the internet is not all about Ethernet. You have tokenring, SLIP, PPP and a few others as well. My design, which I have to admit that I haven't worked on that for a few weeks because of school, for Dex4u's stack is that every driver can register itself to the stack, and this means SLIP, Ethernet and the like can nicely cooperate with eachother. Second, you totally forget about UDP and ICMP. UDP is mostly used in internet-streams (video, radio) and f.e. my cable modem uses it to retrieve its parameters from my ISP. ICMP is a lot used in routing the packets. The program ping is probably the best well-known program which uses ICMP. And then the protocol is according to port number like port 25 for mail, then you follow the mail transport protocol (mtp) port 80 for Web port 21 FTP What protocol? I know where you can download the assigned numbers RFC, but quite frankly, I somehow know them already. However, this is not that important for a TCP/IP stack to know. According to my point of view, it is preferable to have less functionalities and more control as well as a more solid foundation So for me, it's not important to implement everything about the protocol TCP/IP but to have the minimun needed to get what we want and then have the change to evolve from that. I agree with it somehow, but only when you are designing it, you know you have to add more in the future. So, making it 'modular' will help you more, although it's probably more difficult in the beginning. But, I'm probably going off-topic now :D, so I think I'll open a thread about the stack one day, only when I have time(!!) to continue it. DennisCGc.

Thank you very much for your post on license and tcp/ip stack, the links look very informative, i will study them , as i am in get as much info as i can, before starting coding. And your ideas about how a OS should be are like mine, we should also as far as security is concerned, design OS like animals, that is if all humans were the same, we could get wiped out by a virus, but our DNA has little mistakes in it, so some people will be amusen to the virus. So if we all use window a virus could do a lot of damage, but if we had 100's of differant OS it would not be so bad. Once again thanks for the info and links 8) . EDIT: @DennisCGc, you seem to be the expert in the group as far as Networking goes, 8) . At XMAS I got about 6 books on TCP/IP and wi-fi hacking, just for when the time came to write this sort of code for Dex4u, i am giving them a good read, thats why my eye are like this :shock: I now need to wear these 8) :lol: But, I'm probably going off-topic now :D There's no such thing as off-topic on this forum.

One of the ?, that i have the answer to, is modules, as Dex4u has the ability to load module and link into them on the fly. See here: http://dex.7.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=172&start=0 http://dex.7.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=185 The first thing we need to do is write a driver for our ethernet cards. If we do this ( thouse that are working on this project ), at lest we will have more than one driver. This will not be easy, as its the chichen and egg, as in not easy to test drivers without anything to test it with. All as with all projects, first thing to do is get it working right, once it working good, you can optimise it for speed. It would help if any members post there Ethernet card make, so a driver can be made for the commonest one. Regards Dex.

Okay, before I'll answer any questions, it seemed that my replies yesterday sounded harsh. I'm sorry for that. The only things I can blame for is that I don't sleep much, plus a few private reasons. Anyway, My design, which I designed before all this for my OS except with a few minor differences (major in implementation), is that every network-enabled driver registers itself at my net.asm code. So: User A uses Dex4u. He has a normal SLIP connection to mainframe B. He loads the SLIP driver. The SLIP driver then registers itself, with a few parameters (offset of send_packet, receive_packet, etc.). The stack has an internal table of ip addresses for each device, routing tables, and driver tables. In that way, drivers can be easily loaded, without having to change the stack code. So far, I think this is pretty basic, but should do the trick. Please keep in mind, the driver is responsible to deliver complete packets to the stack. Ethernet drivers are also responsible to add their own layer. (But this can be avoided though: NE2k driver, 3com driver ------------------------------- Ethernet layer (registers itself as two devices) ------------------------------- Stack ---(etc) ) That's the cool thing, IMO :P, you can add a number of layers. This design will be used at least in my OS, but I think it can also be used in this OS, with a few alterations in the implementation (plus with a few limitations as well) Ok may be you are wright. I' juste dont known exactly where to start from. Sorry and just would like to put some pointer here for someone if they are insterested to studies the case. The way I learned it was rather silly, I became interested so I downloaded the RFCs, but also sniffed some traffic. You then have a 'perfect' (again, imo) combination of theory and practice. Please note however, don't literally copy the practice stuff, like Windows' stack behaviour. It's always best to come with your own design. To have more insight on sockets; program programs with socket support. Program a simple server (SMTP? HTTP? Too many to name them). Also write some clients. Toy with networking at your home, with routing tables etc. Also, read articles about networking protocols, or just networking (not the newbie stuff, most of them are imo boring). I didn't read books about it, but I did some research on my owm. If you have anymore questions, or if I haven't made myself clear (which should be able to occur, English is not my native language after all), just post. Good luck, DennisCGc.

Thanks DennisCGc, very informative :wink: .

Dont forget the ARP protocol guys, as it keeps ethernet and IP together.. I'm currently trying to redesign the KolibriOS stack, but as I want EVERYTHING to be able to dynamically load and unload, this is not an easy task :) As for the speed, when you are parsing a packet, one protocol capsulated into another, DO NOT COPY THE DATA! this is one of the things that makes the current stack so slow. Put the data into a (dynamic) buffer instead, and pass a pointer. That being said, good luck ;) PS: i'll help you guys where i can :p

Thank for the info hidnplayr, and any help will be great, as and when your time allows, it seems i have so many off shoots that i am working on, its hard to get one thing finished. I must stop starting work on any other off shoots, untill i have finish the ones i have started. Regards Dex.

@dex: I know what you mean. I am working on the BASIC syntax layer for FASM, and that led me to work on math routines... Also I started working on the DexVM again, hopefully to get a simple bytecode reader working (remember the days of compiling by hand? oh yeah...)

GNU me thinks