Academic and Industrial Research Utilizing NetBSD

NetBSD has served as a foundational platform for a diverse array of researchers, organizations, and independent developers to conduct experiments and showcase technical demonstrations.

Call for Contributions: If you have conducted research using NetBSD and wish to have your work featured in this directory, please reach out to the maintainers!

🌐 Research Overview

The following diagram illustrates the primary domains where NetBSD has been applied:

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📡 Network-Oriented Investigations

NetBSD's flexibility makes it a premier choice for networking research. The table below summarizes key initiatives:

NASA Lewis Research Center

The Satellite Networks and Architectures Branch relies almost exclusively on NetBSD to study TCP behavior in satellite environments. Their work involves:

• Testing modifications to the Transmission Control Protocol to optimize satellite links.
• Validating these extensions in both space-based and terrestrial settings.
• Evaluating selective acknowledgement mechanisms (such as FACK TCP) and the impact of expanded initial windows.
• Analyzing the balance between performance gains and fairness toward other network traffic.
• Collaborating with IETF working groups regarding TCP Implementations and TCP Over Satellite.

Institute for Media Communication (IMK)

The Value-added Solutions department at IMK utilizes NetBSD for several specialized projects:

• Network Access Control: Creating a granular access language integrated into the ip stack. This allows admins to restrict network access based on time, remote login status, or specific users (e.g., bin or nobody).
• Secure Tunneling: Developing a server to transparently wrap insecure protocols (like pop3 or smtp) within a secure tunnel.
• Spam Mitigation: Evaluating the feasibility of a custom tool designed to block unsolicited bulk email.
• MTA Innovation: Creating a replacement for sendmail that utilizes asynchronous I/O to handle numerous simultaneous SMTP connections via a single process.
  • Result: Early beta versions significantly outperform sendmail, qmail, and other free MTAs.

TCP Vegas & NEC Europe

Research into TCP Vegas—an advanced slowstart flow control method developed by Lawrence Brakmo et al.—was ported to NetBSD 1.0 by Danzig's group at usc.edu.

Meanwhile, NEC Europe established its Network Laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany (1997). Their goals include:

1. Reducing the time-to-market for cutting-edge network tech.
2. Developing architectures for mobility and multimedia.
3. Utilizing NetBSD's multi-platform nature to run IPv6 services on legacy hardware, such as Sparc systems.

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🚀 Performance and Records

The Internet2 Land Speed Record

Researchers from the Swedish University Network (SUNET) achieved a world record using NetBSD 2.0 Beta. Using two Dell 2650 servers (single 2GHz CPUs), they transferred a massive amount of data.

The Statistics:

• Data Volume: $840\text{ GB}$
• Time Elapsed: $< 30\text{ minutes}$
• Stream: Single IPv4 TCP stream
• Route: Luleå University of Technology $\rightarrow$ Sprint PoP (San Jose, CA)

The calculated throughput is approximately: $\text{Rate} = \frac{840 \text{ GB}}{1800 \text{ s}} \approx 466.67 \text{ MB/s}$

Regarding the choice of OS, the team stated:

"NetBSD was chosen due to the scalability of the TCP code."

For further technical details, visit http://proj.sunet.se/LSR2/ or the official competition site at http://lsr.internet2.edu/.

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🛠️ Other System Research

Beyond networking, NetBSD has been used for various core system enhancements:

• Memory Management: The UVM (Virtual Memory) System.
• Instrumentation: Space Acceleration Measurement System II (SAMS-II).
• Storage: Massively-parallel And Real-time Storage.
• Kernel Facilities: New Timer and Callout mechanisms.
• Collaboration: Group Awareness in Distributed Software Development via Application-Driven Checkpointing.
• Reliability: Logic for Hot Spare High Availability.

SCAMPI Project

SCAMPI is a European initiative spanning two and a half years. Its primary objective is the creation of a scaleable monitoring platform for the Internet, aiming to enhance technology and services through better monitoring tools.

/* Example of a conceptual research hook in a BSD kernel */
void research_monitor_packet(struct mbuf *m) {
    if (m->m_type == MBUF_NETWORK_DATA) {
        // Log packet for SCAMPI analysis
        log_packet_metrics(m);
    }
}