CS2680 11-1-snap

Reading Review for Class 19

This class’s readings are:

• Snap

Optional:

• NetChannel
• Floem

Your review should include both a summary of these papers, which discusses

• the problem the paper addresses
• the paper’s solution
• the evidence the paper provides that the solution was correct. Remember to keep in mind the historical context the papers discuss.

Your review should also discuss, after the summary:

• whether the problem the paper solved is an important one
• whether the solution was a good one
• whether the paper was fun or enjoyable to read.
• what questions you have about the paper, or which parts of the paper (if any) you found hard to understand.

You should answer the above questions in about one sentence each. The remainder of your review (about the below questions) should be about a page (~500 words) long.

Finally, for this week’s paper, please reflect on the following question:

The Snap paper states that it makes the following tradeoff:

Our approach also allows Snap to eschew the complexity of full compatibility with existing interfaces like POSIX and socket system calls, and to instead favor opportu- nities for vertical integration with our applications

What kinds of users, applications, or workloads does this tradeoff work well for, and what kind(s) does it not work well for? Should future research on host networking attempt to maintain compatibility with the POSIX API?