The Bi-Channel Networking Paradigm for Database Systems in the Cloud (opens in new tab)

When network links were slow, cloud and distributed database systems could rely on generic kernel abstractions and treat network communication as a black box. With today's fast cloud networks, this approach breaks down: database performance becomes limited by the CPU overhead of the kernel TCP stack. Replacing TCP with user-space UDP can reduce this overhead, but it requires reimplementing essential guarantees, such as reliability and ordering. ...