- Full-featured, high-performance stack
- Dual Mode IPv4/IPv6
- Extensive Routing Support
- True Zero Copy
- Host and Routing Configurations
- Features
Full-featured, high-performance stack
The foundation for all networking protocols for the Green Hills family of operating systems is the GHNet TCP/IP stack. It's a full featured and high performance dual mode IPv4/IPv6 stack for embedded systems with options for advanced routing, and an extensive suite of security protocols. GHNet is an ultra compact IPv4/IPv6 stack, designed for minimum footprint and maximum performance, and is integrated and validated with INTEGRITY®, INTEGRITY-178B, and µ-velOSity™.
GHNet is suited for use in products ranging from small foot print consumer devices to advanced core network equipment. It has broad RFC support and has been through extensive protocol conformance and interoperability testing. It is also integrated with a broad range of networking applications, management, and security protocols. See the complete list of supported protocols below.
Dual Mode IPv4/IPv6
GHNet is a true dual mode IPv4/IPv6 stack and can be configured for IPv4 only, IPv6 only, or to support both protocols simultaneously. This is an important feature since the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is expected to take several years. Furthermore, the IPv6 functionality has been approved by the industry standard IPv6 READY Program, which guarantees IPv6 interoperability.
Modular Design and Scalability
The GHNet protocol suite has a modular design and is highly configurable providing maximum size and feature scalability. When a module is not utilized, it is not just deactivated, it is removed entirely to save valuable storage memory space in the often limited capacity of an embedded device. This results in footprint sizes as small as 25 kilobytes for a UDP only configured stack and 41 kilobytes for a TCP enabled stack.
Extensive Routing support
GHNet can be configured to support host-only stack features with minimal footprint, or enabled with advanced routing features. The built-in virtual routing and forwarding support enables a single stack to assume the responsibility of multiple TCP/IP stacks. This enables far more efficient use of existing hardware and software capabilities than previously possible. Furthermore GHNet can also work with advanced third party routing solutions like OSPF, BGP, RIP, IS-IS, PIM-SIM, and DVMRP.
Multiple instances
GHNet can be configured to run in either the kernel’s address space, or in a separate partition for maximum security. It is also possible to run multiple instances of the stack in separate partitions enabling stacks to execute at multiple independent levels of security.
True zero copy
GHNet offers a zero copy API that provides the option for true zero copy for raw sockets, UDP, and TCP from the application all the way through the driver, including the TCP layer when the stack is running in kernel mode. This optimizes processing speed and packet throughput.
Written by US citizens
GHNet is a clean room design, written by US citizens from the ground up. It was not derived from publicly available Unix stacks or open source software. The design achieves Berkeley 4.4 and Netlink socket compatibility, small size, and high performance for both IP and UDP traffic.
Features
- Dual mode stack (IPv4 / IPv6) with the compile-time option to disable either IPv6 or IPv4, resulting in reduced code size
- Plug-and-play auto-configuration, including:
- auto-discovery of default routers
- auto-recovery when a default router becomes unreachable
- auto-discovery of network parameters such as hop limit (TTL) and link MTU
- prefix discovery and stateless address autoconfiguration
- Generic IPv6 Tunnels
- Built-in support for IPv6 multicast
- IPv6-over-IPv4 tunneling support:
- automatic and configured tunnels
- bi-directional configured tunnels
- default configured gateway tunnel
- Supports Ethernet, PPP, and custom link-layers
- Backwards-compatible IPv6 4.4BSD socket API extensions
- Full integration with IPsec
- IPv6 Address Resolution independent of link type
- IPv6 Host and Router functionality
- Built-in support for IPv6 private address spaces
- Compile-time macros for disabling specific IPv6 functionality, resulting in reduced code size:
- Duplicate Address Detection
- Prefix Discovery with Stateless Address Auto-Configuration
- Multicast Listener Discovery
- Neighbor Unreachability Detection
Third-Party Integrations
Relationships with established vendors in routing, network management and middleware greatly expand the networking solution available with GHNet.
- Allegro Software—support for advanced web servers, command line interfaces, and UPnP/DLNA
- Certicom—support for network security and encryption technologies for meeting elliptic curve cryptographic (ECC), Suite B, and FIPS 140-2 requirements
- Data Connections Ltd.—support for OSPF(-TE), ISIS (-TE), BGP, RSVP-TE, CR-LDP, LDP, GMPLS, UNI, MGCP, Megaco, SIP, SCTP, IETF and UNI, ATM, PNNI, ILMI, PVCs, sPVCs, SVCs
- Nexthop—support for: RIP, OSPF, BGP, IS-IS, DVMRP, IGMP, PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, PIM-DM, MSDP, MP-BGP for IPv6, IS-IS for IPv6, OSPFv3, MPLS, VRE (Virtual Routing Environment) and VPN (layer 3 MPLS-BGP virtual private networking)
- Objective Interface Systems—support for CORBA and PCSexpress
- PrismTech—support for embedded CORBA and SDR tools and operating environments
- RadVision Ltd.—support for SIP, H.323 MGCP, MEGACO/ H.248, 3G-324M, RTP/RTCP, IP Phone, ProLab
- Real-Time Innovations—support for DDS publishsubscribe middleware
- SNMP Research Inc.—support for EMANATE products supporting SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and secure SNMPv3
- Visuality Systems—support for CIFS based solutions for Network Embedded Systems