netstackxx is an implementation of a significant portion of the Linux networking stack in C++ including: IP routing, a network interface, and the TCP protocol.

It uses Keith Winstein's (@keithw) minnow utils which wrap Linux operating system functions in modern C++ interfaces.

I created netstackxx as a side-project in 2021 while learning networking systems at university and am in the process of migrating the code and docs to GitHub.

What, you can’t learn TCP? Then write your own! — anonymous Zhihu user

Environment

netstackxx requires a GNU/Linux operating system and a recent C++ compiler that supports the C++ 2020 standard.

If you are on macOS or Windows and already have Docker Desktop installed, then you already have Linux installed in the form of a LinuxKit VM without the overhead of a full virtual machine like VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, or VirtualBox.

On your Linux box:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install 
git  \
cmake \
gdb \
build-essential \
clang \
clang-tidy \
clang-format \
gcc-doc \
pkg-config \
glibc-doc \
tcpdump \
tshark

Build

To set up the build system: cmake -S . -B build

To compile: cmake --build build

To run tests: cmake --build build --target test

To run speed benchmarks: cmake --build build --target speed

To run clang-tidy (which suggests improvements): cmake --build build --target tidy

To format code: cmake --build build --target format