Systemd Is Working Towards Its Own Super Fast DHCP Server, Client

Written by Michael Larabel in systemd on 2 April 2014 at 03:04 PM EDT. 57 Comments
SYSTEMD
Systemd has been working on network support for this leading open-source init system. As part of this, systemd developers have now achieved support for obtaining a network connection in less than one millisecond... With that said, systemd developers are working towards having DHCP client and server capabilities built into the init system for having a super-fast booting OS and quicker network connections when resuming the system.

Systemd developer Tom Gundersen posted this week on Google+ about DHCP performance and working on reasonably-fast network configuration for systemd's networkd. Work by Tom and others in recent weeks of profiling their DHCP client library have dropped the time needed to obtain a DHCP lease from 500ms to less than 50ms, and then this week a DHCP lease can be acquired by networkd in as little as 750 microseconds.

There's still network performance improvements being worked on by systemd developers, as noted in the Google+ posting.

Systemd has been working on DHCP client and server support within libsystemd-network. Frequent Phoronix news contributor Markg85 pointed out to one of the Google+ comments that a sd-dhcp-server component isa soon coming to accompany sd-dhcp-client within systemd.

Most of this work seems to be making on-demand Linux containers a reality, Gundersen posted, "my main focus at the moment is containers. We can boot a whole operating system in a container in ~100ms (now including getting a network connection). That means that you can start your containers on demand without significantly affecting response time." Of course, it will benefit desktop users too, "Also, even on a laptop you do want a fast DHCP client so when your laptop comes out of sleep it will have a connection immediately (at least this used to be an annoyance for me, but I'm sure YMMV). We want to be faster than it takes to switch on your screen."
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week