From Low-level Internet Sockets To High-level Programmable Connectors

Reowolf replaces the decades-old BSD-style socket for Internet communication: offering an innovative, programmable and interoperable connector API at the system-level to support the separation of concerns between privacy and performance optimization.

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Reowolf 2.0: Release Notes

May 20, 2022 Releases

We are happy to release version 2 of the Reowolf project. This version introduces many new features: a select statement, run-time error handling, dynamic port hand-off, native TCP components and detailed project documentation. This post summarizes the most important features, and further lays out the vision we have for the future of Reowolf. This release is sponsored by the Next Generation Internet fund. This release can be found on our Gitlab repository page. Gitlab includes an issue tracker that is…

Smart Connectors for the Next Generation Internet

What are the benefits of using Reowolf connectors over BSD-style sockets for Internet applications?

Declarative Protocol Language

Applications declare the network's behavior it expects from the connector declaratively and ahead-of-time, in a domain specific language:
Protocol Description Language (PDL).

Privacy-first Quality of Service

A Reowolf implementation offers optimization opportunities and intrusion detection capability that does not rely on ad-hoc and non-standard techniques such as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI).

Decentralization

Programming distributed Internet applications using connectors is simpler than using sockets: applications use only a single connector to manage communication with multiple peers.

Compositionality

Connectors are compositionally built from user-definable protocol components, that improves reusability and allows for formal verification of high-level protocol properties.

Compatibility & Interoperability

Connectors can run seamlessly on existing Internet infrastructure, and is interoperable with socket-based applications using current and novel transport layer implementations.

Operating System Integration

Reowolf aims at building two standardized implementations, following the development model of pthreads: a user-mode reference implementation and a kernel-mode driver.

Free and Open Source Software Project

Follow the active development from the git repository.

Git Repository

Mailing List

A public mailing list is available for general discussion:

reowolf-list@cwi.nl

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Reowolf 1.0 has received funding from NGI ZERO PET Fund, a fund established by NLnet Foundation with financial support from the European Commission, as part of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under grant agreement No. 825310.

Reowolf 2.0 has received funding from NGI POINTER, the Next Generation Internet Program for Open Internet Renovation, with financial support from the European Commission, as part of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement No. 871528.

Verified Reowolf has received funding from NGI Assure Fund, a fund established by NLnet Foundation with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No. 957073.