▲WolfIP: Lightweight TCP/IP stack with no dynamic memory allocations(github.com)
102 points by 789c789c789c 12 hours ago | 5 comments
▲rwmj 6 hours ago
passt (the network stack that you might be using if you're running qemu, or podman containers) also has no dynamic memory allocations. I always thought it's quite an interesting achievement. https://blog.vmsplice.net/2021/10/a-new-approach-to-usermode... https://passt.top/passt/about/#security
▲rpcope1 9 hours ago
It would be interesting to know why you would choose this over something like the Contiki uIP or lwIP that everything seems to use.
▲RealityVoid 9 hours ago
Not sure if they do for _this_ package, but the Wolf* people's model is usually selling certification packages so you can put their things in stuff that need certifications and you offload liability. You also get people that wrote it and that you can pay for support. I kind of like them, had a short project where I had to call on them for getting their WolfSSL to work with a ATECC508 device and it was pretty good support from them.
▲jpfr 8 hours ago
As the project is GPL’ed I guess they sell a commercial version. GPL is toxic for embedded commercial software. But it can be good marketing to sell the commercial version.

Edit: I meant commercial license

▲RealityVoid 8 hours ago
I think they might sell a commercial version as well. It makes sense with the GPL. But I can't really recall that well.
▲LoganDark 8 hours ago
You don't need a commercial version, many projects get away with selling just a commercial license to the same version. As long as they have the rights to relicense this works fine.
▲CyberDildonics 3 hours ago
Are there TCP/IP stacks out there in common use that are allocating memory all the time?
▲wmf 2 hours ago
Packets and sockets have to be stored in memory somehow. If you have a fixed pool that you reuse it's basically a slab allocator.
▲ 12 hours ago
▲sedatk 5 hours ago
It only implements IPv4 which explains to a degree that why IPv6 isn't ubiquitous: it's costly to implement.
▲notepad0x90 4 hours ago
It's just not worth it. the only thing keeping it alive is people being overly zealous over it. if the cost to implement is measured as '1', the cost to administer it is like '50'.
▲sedatk 3 hours ago
> the only thing keeping it alive is people being overly zealous over it

Hard disagree. It turned out to be great for mobile connectivity and IoT (Matter + Thread).

> the cost to administer it is like '50'.

I'm not sure if that's true. It feels like less work to me because you don't need to worry about NAT or DHCP as much as you need with IPv4.

▲toast0 3 hours ago
Eh. IPv6 is probably cheaper to run compared to running large scale CGNAT. It's well deployed in mobile and in areas without a lot of legacy IPv4 assignments. Most of the high traffic content networks support it, so if you're an eyeball network, you can shift costs away from CGNAT to IPv6. You still have to do both though.

Is it my favorite? No. Is it well supported? Not everywhere. Is it going to win, eventually? Probably, but maybe IPv8 will happen, in which case maybe they learn and it it has a 10 years to 50% of traffic instead of 30 years to 50% of traffic.

▲gnerd00 4 hours ago
my 15 year old Macbook does IPv6 and IPv4 effortlessly