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Introduction

Make Fragmentation History

Expect the Expected

Buying More Spatial Locality (Instructions)

Buying More Spatial Locality (Data)

Cutting Down the Queues

Parallel Processing Architectures

Besides Protocol Implementation

Conclusion

Glossary

References

Further Reading

Feedback

Welcome to my online protocol processing tutorial.

The purpose of this tutorial is to shed some light on the overhead of protocol implementation, and how to cut down on it. We walk through different schemes used to improve the performance of protocol processing.

In order to benefit from this tutorial, the reader is expected to have basic understanding of:

• the protocol stack (especially the transport and network layers)
• functions of a router
• how operating systems work
• what compilers are, and what they do

The tutorial should take between 90 and 120 minutes to complete. The tutorial is organised as follows:

• introduction to protocol processing
• various examples of techniques to improve protocol processing
• conclusion
• glossary
• references
• further reading

Acronyms within the text are tagged, so that you can reveal what they stand for simply by hovering over them (example: HTML). There is also a glossary of the acronyms used in the text of the tutorial.

References within the text are linked to the online bibliography page. You can either download a copy of the reference (except books), or search for it on Google Scholar. A recommended list of further reading is included. There is also a feedback form. Please feel free to comment on the tutorial or to discuss any of the topics.

Yehia El khatib