native-transports vs netty-tcnative (Forked Tomcat Native)

[Manikanta G]

Hi,

I'm a bit confused to understand difference/relation between Netty's native-transports (http://netty.io/wiki/native-transports.html) and netty-tcnative (http://netty.io/wiki/forked-tomcat-native.html), especially in regards to Vert.x usage.

As mentioned in vertx-core Java guide (https://vertx.io/docs/vertx-core/java/#_native_transports), one can enable native transport to get more TCP features and to get better network throughput - correct me if I'm wrong. To do so, we need to include netty-transport-native-epoll dependency, and enable it in Launch code, like below:

public class VertxLauncher extends Launcher {

    private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(VertxLauncher.class);

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new VertxLauncher().dispatch(args);
    }

    @Override
    public void beforeStartingVertx(VertxOptions options) {
        LOG.info("Starting application...");

        options.setPreferNativeTransport(true);
    }

    @Override
    public void afterStartingVertx(Vertx vertx) {
        boolean usingNative = vertx.isNativeTransportEnabled();
        LOG.info("Is running with native transport: {}", usingNative); // ----------> This is printing 'false' on Windows.
    }
}

Netty has netty-tcnative module which brings the APR+OpenSSL/BoringSSL support for Windows as well. As mentioned in it's doc (http://netty.io/wiki/forked-tomcat-native.html#wiki-h2-5), if we set the SslProvider.OPENSSL, it'll use netty-tcnative. 

  SslContext sslContext =
    SslContextBuilder.forServer(certificate, privateKey)
                     .sslProvider(SslProvider.OPENSSL)
                     .build();

Question: What is the relation between these w.r.to Vert.x as doc mentions native transport. I thought netty-transport-native-epoll, which Vertx depends on for native transport, uses netty-tcnative internally. But I couldn't see the dependency on it. And vertx.isNativeTransportEnabled() is returning 'false' even I included both 'netty-tcnative-boringssl-static' and 'netty-transport-native-epoll'. As per Netty doc, 'netty-tcnative-boringssl-static' has native libs for Windows as well.

Thanks,

Manikanta G

[Julien Viet]

those are not related.

- native transport is about the Netty Channel implementation that use JNI for Epoll instead of Java NIO (that is also Epoll)

- tcnative is about the SslHandler used for TLS encryption that either uses JNI with OpenSSL or the JDK SSL implementation

you can make any combination of these.

Julien

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[Michael Pog]

Actually I have a follow up question on that Julien,

I'm a bit confused about the native transport as well.

If both native transport (Linux) and NIO use epoll, why would I want/need to enable native transport? Is there anything I may get out of it? 

Thanks

[Julien Viet]

native epoll on linux gives you more socket options such as TCP_FAST_OPEN, TCP_QUICKACK, SO_REUSEPORT, etc...

not all are exposed in Vert.x for now but those are.

https://netty.io/4.1/api/io/netty/channel/epoll/EpollChannelOption.html

it can gives a significant improvements in some conditions.

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