TIPC: Providing Communication for Linux Clusters

The paper will discuss the architecture and implementation of the Transparent Inter Process Communication (TIPC) protocol. TIPC is a protocol specially designed for efficient intra cluster communication, leveraging the particular conditions present within loosely coupled clusters. It runs on Linux and is provided as a portable source code package implementing a loadable kernel module. TIPC is available from http://tipc.sourceforge.net.

TIPC is quite unique from the perspective that there seems to be no other protocol providing a comparable combination of versatility and performance. The functional addressing scheme is an original innovation, as is the toplogy subscription services and its "reactive connection" concept. TIPC is a useful toolbox for anyone wanting to develop or use Carrier Grade or Highly Available clusters on Linux. It will provide the necessary infrastructure for both cluster, network and software management functionality, as well as a good support for designing site-independent, scalable, distributed, high-availability and high-performance applications. In the paper, we will discuss the motives for developing TIPC, and present its architecture. We will also present the most important TIPC features, such as the full location transparency, the lightweight connections, reliable multicast, the signalling link protocol, topology subscription services and more. We will also discuss the various design decisions that influenced the implementation of these features. In addition, we will demonstrate TIPC performance and QoS capabilities.