5 ms·

A Virtual LAN using NATS, written in Go

110 points by rapidloop 9y ago

crest 9y ago
In effect this is still Ethernet over TCP, but other than that it's a cool idea. Now if only NATS would support SCTP...
- crocal 9y ago
  Agree. I would really like to hear what is the upside / sales pitch of NATS compared to an Erlang server (that, BTW, supports SCTP out of the box).
  - gigatexal 9y ago
    Developer creates alpha /pet project for fun and learning and HN commenters complain it doesn’t do enough... sheesh.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      I don't see any trace of complaint; did he edit his post?
      - gigatexal 9y ago
        No actually I think I was quick to judge. My critique is wrong.
        weberc2 9y ago
        Eh, easy mistake. Text lacks a lot of nonverbal context.
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    NATS can saturate a network port with hundreds of thousands of messages/second with minimal impact on CPU, it scales linearly with cores, and it has minimal/zero effort fail-over. Whether across large geographic boundaries (ie: AWS cross-region) or in the same rack, NATS clustering is reliable and definitely speedy.
    - crocal 9y ago
      Thanks!
    - bjflanne 9y ago
      Well said; the other project involving NATS from the Rapidloop team (gRPC over NATS essentially) mentions some benefits as they see it which are what you've pointed out: https://github.com/rapidloop/nrpc https://github.com/rapidloop/nrpc
- steeve 9y ago
  What about quic?
api 9y ago
Ethernet or raw IP over TCP are slow (without some really creative hacks involving multiple TCP links) due to the double ACK problem. Adding UDP would probably not be hard.
feelin_googley 9y ago
"... only works on Linux." "Multicast is not supported." I seem to recall other L2 overlay projects, UDP-based, that are both portable to other OS (subject to TAP requirement) and have no problem with multicast. Curious: What causes these limitations with NATS?
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  NATS is just a message broker, and runs wherever Go runs. The limitations are in this project. It's a 105-line proof of concept, clearly the author didn't bother making it portable.
jbverschoor 9y ago
Also check out zerotier. It works really well, and routes traffic through the local lan if available. It also supports other protocols than ip.

110 points by rapidloop 9y ago

crest 9y ago

In effect this is still Ethernet over TCP, but other than that it's a cool idea. Now if only NATS would support SCTP...

crocal 9y ago
Agree. I would really like to hear what is the upside / sales pitch of NATS compared to an Erlang server (that, BTW, supports SCTP out of the box).
- gigatexal 9y ago
  Developer creates alpha /pet project for fun and learning and HN commenters complain it doesn’t do enough... sheesh.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I don't see any trace of complaint; did he edit his post?
    - gigatexal 9y ago
      No actually I think I was quick to judge. My critique is wrong.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        Eh, easy mistake. Text lacks a lot of nonverbal context.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  NATS can saturate a network port with hundreds of thousands of messages/second with minimal impact on CPU, it scales linearly with cores, and it has minimal/zero effort fail-over. Whether across large geographic boundaries (ie: AWS cross-region) or in the same rack, NATS clustering is reliable and definitely speedy.
  - crocal 9y ago
    Thanks!
  - bjflanne 9y ago
    Well said; the other project involving NATS from the Rapidloop team (gRPC over NATS essentially) mentions some benefits as they see it which are what you've pointed out: https://github.com/rapidloop/nrpc https://github.com/rapidloop/nrpc
steeve 9y ago
What about quic?

api 9y ago

Ethernet or raw IP over TCP are slow (without some really creative hacks involving multiple TCP links) due to the double ACK problem. Adding UDP would probably not be hard.

feelin_googley 9y ago

"... only works on Linux." "Multicast is not supported." I seem to recall other L2 overlay projects, UDP-based, that are both portable to other OS (subject to TAP requirement) and have no problem with multicast. Curious: What causes these limitations with NATS?

lobster_johnson 9y ago
NATS is just a message broker, and runs wherever Go runs. The limitations are in this project. It's a 105-line proof of concept, clearly the author didn't bother making it portable.

jbverschoor 9y ago

Also check out zerotier. It works really well, and routes traffic through the local lan if available. It also supports other protocols than ip.