TCP/IP Networking

As the Internet has grown to become more and more visible in our daily lives, the protocol it's based on—IP (Internet Protocol)—has become increasingly important. The IP protocol and tools that go with it are ubiquitous, making IP the de facto choice for many private networks.

IP is used for everything from simple tasks (e.g., remote login) to more complicated tasks (e.g., delivering realtime stock quotes). Most businesses are turning to the World Wide Web, which commonly rides on IP, for communication with their customers, advertising, and other business connectivity. The QNX Neutrino RTOS is well-suited for a variety of roles in this global network, from embedded devices connected to the Internet, to the routers that are used to implement the Internet itself.

Given these and many other user requirements, we've made our TCP/IP stack (included in io-pkt*) relatively light on resources, while using the common BSD API.

We provide the following stack configurations:

NetBSD TCP/IP stack

Based on the latest RFCs, including UDP, IP, and TCP. Also supports forwarding, broadcast and multicast, hardware checksum support, routing sockets, Unix domain sockets, multilink PPP, PPPoE, supernetting (CIDR), NAT/IP filtering, ARP, ICMP, and IGMP, as well as CIFS, DHCP, AutoIP, DNS, NFS (v2 and v3 server/client), NTP, RIP, RIPv2, and an embedded web server.

To create applications for this stack, you use the industry-standard BSD socket API. This stack also includes optimized forwarding code for additional performance and efficient packet routing when the stack is functioning as a network gateway.

Enhanced NetBSD stack with IPsec and IPv6

Includes all the features in the standard stack, plus the functionality targeted at the new generation of mobile and secure communications. This stack provides full IPv6 and IPsec (both IPv4 and IPv6) support through KAME extensions, as well as support for VPNs over IPsec tunnels.

This dual-mode stack supports IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously and includes IPv6 support for autoconfiguration, which allows device configuration in plug-and-play network environments. IPv6 support includes IPv6-aware utilities and RIP/RIPng to support dynamic routing. An Advanced Socket API is also provided to supplement the standard socket API to take advantage of IPv6 extended-development capabilities.

IPsec support allows secure communication between hosts or networks, providing data confidentiality via strong encryption algorithms and data authentication features. IPsec support also includes the IKE (ISAKMP/Oakley) key management protocol for establishing secure host associations.

The QNX Neutrino TCP/IP suite is also modular. For example, it provides NFS as separate modules. With this kind of modularity, together with small-sized modules, embedded systems developers can more easily and quickly build small TCP/IP-capable systems.