1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 2 3================= 4Linux Kernel TIPC 5================= 6 7Introduction 8============ 9 10TIPC (Transparent Inter Process Communication) is a protocol that is specially 11designed for intra-cluster communication. It can be configured to transmit 12messages either on UDP or directly across Ethernet. Message delivery is 13sequence guaranteed, loss free and flow controlled. Latency times are shorter 14than with any other known protocol, while maximal throughput is comparable to 15that of TCP. 16 17TIPC Features 18------------- 19 20- Cluster wide IPC service 21 22 Have you ever wished you had the convenience of Unix Domain Sockets even when 23 transmitting data between cluster nodes? Where you yourself determine the 24 addresses you want to bind to and use? Where you don't have to perform DNS 25 lookups and worry about IP addresses? Where you don't have to start timers 26 to monitor the continuous existence of peer sockets? And yet without the 27 downsides of that socket type, such as the risk of lingering inodes? 28 29 Welcome to the Transparent Inter Process Communication service, TIPC in short, 30 which gives you all of this, and a lot more. 31 32- Service Addressing 33 34 A fundamental concept in TIPC is that of Service Addressing which makes it 35 possible for a programmer to chose his own address, bind it to a server 36 socket and let client programs use only that address for sending messages. 37 38- Service Tracking 39 40 A client wanting to wait for the availability of a server, uses the Service 41 Tracking mechanism to subscribe for binding and unbinding/close events for 42 sockets with the associated service address. 43 44 The service tracking mechanism can also be used for Cluster Topology Tracking, 45 i.e., subscribing for availability/non-availability of cluster nodes. 46 47 Likewise, the service tracking mechanism can be used for Cluster Connectivity 48 Tracking, i.e., subscribing for up/down events for individual links between 49 cluster nodes. 50 51- Transmission Modes 52 53 Using a service address, a client can send datagram messages to a server socket. 54 55 Using the same address type, it can establish a connection towards an accepting 56 server socket. 57 58 It can also use a service address to create and join a Communication Group, 59 which is the TIPC manifestation of a brokerless message bus. 60 61 Multicast with very good performance and scalability is available both in 62 datagram mode and in communication group mode. 63 64- Inter Node Links 65 66 Communication between any two nodes in a cluster is maintained by one or two 67 Inter Node Links, which both guarantee data traffic integrity and monitor 68 the peer node's availability. 69 70- Cluster Scalability 71 72 By applying the Overlapping Ring Monitoring algorithm on the inter node links 73 it is possible to scale TIPC clusters up to 1000 nodes with a maintained 74 neighbor failure discovery time of 1-2 seconds. For smaller clusters this 75 time can be made much shorter. 76 77- Neighbor Discovery 78 79 Neighbor Node Discovery in the cluster is done by Ethernet broadcast or UDP 80 multicast, when any of those services are available. If not, configured peer 81 IP addresses can be used. 82 83- Configuration 84 85 When running TIPC in single node mode no configuration whatsoever is needed. 86 When running in cluster mode TIPC must as a minimum be given a node address 87 (before Linux 4.17) and told which interface to attach to. The "tipc" 88 configuration tool makes is possible to add and maintain many more 89 configuration parameters. 90 91- Performance 92 93 TIPC message transfer latency times are better than in any other known protocol. 94 Maximal byte throughput for inter-node connections is still somewhat lower than 95 for TCP, while they are superior for intra-node and inter-container throughput 96 on the same host. 97 98- Language Support 99 100 The TIPC user API has support for C, Python, Perl, Ruby, D and Go. 101 102More Information 103---------------- 104 105- How to set up TIPC: 106 107 http://tipc.io/getting_started.html 108 109- How to program with TIPC: 110 111 http://tipc.io/programming.html 112 113- How to contribute to TIPC: 114 115- http://tipc.io/contacts.html 116 117- More details about TIPC specification: 118 119 http://tipc.io/protocol.html 120 121 122Implementation 123============== 124 125TIPC is implemented as a kernel module in net/tipc/ directory. 126 127TIPC Base Types 128--------------- 129 130.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/subscr.h 131 :internal: 132 133.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/bearer.h 134 :internal: 135 136.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/name_table.h 137 :internal: 138 139.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/name_distr.h 140 :internal: 141 142.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/bcast.c 143 :internal: 144 145TIPC Bearer Interfaces 146---------------------- 147 148.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/bearer.c 149 :internal: 150 151.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/udp_media.c 152 :internal: 153 154TIPC Crypto Interfaces 155---------------------- 156 157.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/crypto.c 158 :internal: 159 160TIPC Discoverer Interfaces 161-------------------------- 162 163.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/discover.c 164 :internal: 165 166TIPC Link Interfaces 167-------------------- 168 169.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/link.c 170 :internal: 171 172TIPC msg Interfaces 173------------------- 174 175.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/msg.c 176 :internal: 177 178TIPC Name Interfaces 179-------------------- 180 181.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/name_table.c 182 :internal: 183 184.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/name_distr.c 185 :internal: 186 187TIPC Node Management Interfaces 188------------------------------- 189 190.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/node.c 191 :internal: 192 193TIPC Socket Interfaces 194---------------------- 195 196.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/socket.c 197 :internal: 198 199TIPC Network Topology Interfaces 200-------------------------------- 201 202.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/subscr.c 203 :internal: 204 205TIPC Server Interfaces 206---------------------- 207 208.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/topsrv.c 209 :internal: 210 211TIPC Trace Interfaces 212--------------------- 213 214.. kernel-doc:: net/tipc/trace.c 215 :internal: 216