IL (network protocol)

From HandWiki
Short description: A transport-layer protocol designed at Bell Labs for the Plan 9 operating system

The Internet Link protocol or IL is a connection-based transport-layer protocol designed at Bell Labs originally as part of the Plan 9 operating system and is used to carry 9P. It is assigned the Internet Protocol number of 40. It is similar to TCP but much simpler.

Its main features are:

  • Reliable datagram service
  • In-sequence delivery
  • Internetworking using IP
  • Low complexity, high performance
  • Adaptive timeouts

As of the Fourth Edition of Plan 9, 2003, IL is deprecated in favor of TCP/IP because it doesn't handle long-distance connections well.[1]

See also

References

  1. "Plan 9 — Fourth Edition Release Notes". Lucent Technologies. June 2003. https://9p.io/sys/doc/release4.html. "We are phasing out the IL protocol since it doesn’t handle long-distance connections well (and long-distance networks don't handle it well, either). IL is still used by fs(4) but TCP has become the standard protocol for all other services." 

Further reading