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Let's say you have a modern computer with a 1 Gpbs Ethernet port running a standard Linux OS. The system receives a network packet on the Ethernet port. What happens next? How does the packet get processed? How does it gets transferred to the upper layer of the OSI model? Ultimately leading to the packet leaving the Ethernet port.
I am not looking for a deep down technical explanation but just a high overview of "Life of a network packet inside a computer". What components are involved? Processor, DMA, Buffer, Interrupts, Kernel, User-space, etc. If you want to make some assumptions for your response, feel free to do so.
Here is a starting point...When a packet arrives at the receive queue of the Ethernet port, an interrupt is generated by the Ethernet chip to signal the processor about the packet...
modest
Posted 2013-05-14T21:24:55.250
Reputation: 1 356
You might get a better answer for this at http://unix.stackexchange.com/
– YLearn – 2013-05-14T22:06:22.290The networking stack in Linux (and any modern operating system) is *very* complex. You'd need to look at some standard networking texts on TCP/IP to get an idea on how it all fits together. Then you'd need to dig in, perhaps via kernelnewbies.
– vonbrand – 2013-05-14T22:09:03.247@YLearn - Thanks for the input. Can I somehow move my post to the Unix SE site? – modest – 2013-05-14T22:35:40.700
@modest, I believe mods can do so, but I don't believe you have the ability to move your own posts. Someone please correct me if I am wrong? – YLearn – 2013-05-14T23:10:15.617
@modest This question refers to the interaction of drivers and hardware and the operating system it plays a less important role. Let it be here). – STTR – 2013-05-14T23:26:41.263