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PHP Programming

phpstack - A TCP/IP Stack and Web Server in PHP 295

Posted by michael from the recursive dept.
Adam Dunkels writes "Following the trend of writing 'inappropriate' programs in the PHP scripting language, I have written a small TCP/IP stack and a web server entirely in PHP. It is extremely stripped down: the IP stack only implements the most basic functionality required for running the web server and the web server cannot handle pages larger than 1.5k. Nevertheless, the stack is able to support an unlimited number of simultaneous TCP connections and the web server has support for PHP scripting. A live demonstration server is up and running the phpstack software."
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phpstack - A TCP/IP Stack and Web Server in PHP More

phpstack - A TCP/IP Stack and Web Server in PHP

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  • Unlimited connections, really? (Score:5, Funny)

    by zeux ( 129034 ) * on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:30PM (#9407738)
    The server only allows very small HTML pages and pictures, but it is able to support an unlimited amount of simultaneous connections.

    You shouldn't have said that here. We are about to brute test this 'unlimited amount of simultaneous connections' thing.

  • That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:31PM (#9407742)
    ... the web server cannot handle pages larger than 1.5k

    Uhh, I guess that's one way to survive a slashdotting. :-)

    But, seriously, your demo doesn't even parse URLs; it is just hard-coded to send out a pre-written response on different ports:

    http://193.10.67.151:8080/ -- Main page
    http://193.10.67.151:8081/ -- Picture of a computer
    http://193.10.67.151:8082/ -- PHP Powered logo
    http://193.10.67.151:8083/ -- Picture of some code
    http://193.10.67.151:8084/ -- Stats

    Combined with the 1.5KB limit, that seems rather half-baked to me.

    You are basically reading just enough of the TCP/IP info to get the source IP address and port, running a different script depending on which port, then packaging the output into a single TCP/IP packet destined for that IP address and sending them out over the network.

    I am rather sure the 1.5KB limit is because you didn't figure out how to deal with packet fragments, for example. So there's no way to raise that limit without rewriting the TCP/IP code. Not cool.
    • Another story about something being done in PHP that ends up not being quite as impressive as the headline led to believe?

    • Re:That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Doppler00 ( 534739 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:40PM (#9407816) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, writing a web server is "inappropriate" languages is pretty easy. As long as you can send bytes out of a port, it's pretty easy.

      I once wrote a webserver for an industrial microcontroller using some obscure language called "optoscript". But at least I made sure that I only needed to connect to one port to access different pages.

    • Re:That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by jackshck ( 516083 ) <jackshck@thewybles.com> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:42PM (#9407833) Homepage Journal
      get over it man. it specificaly says

      this code is not meant to be taken too seriously, it is just a quick and dirty proof-of-concept hack written in about 3 hours.

      could you do better?

      • Re:That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Fearless Freep ( 94727 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:45PM (#9407853)
        Yeah, I wrote a quick and dirty proof of concept distributed object client/server in Python in about two hours, but I wouldn't post it to slashdot. Quick and dirty proofs of concepts are what progreammers do every day...so what?

      • Re:That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        could you do better?

        Yes. First, since I know TCP/IP, I would have designed around the 1.5KB limit initially, by ensuring that TCP/IP could actually send out multiple packets on one connection, rather than just one. And, second, I certainly would have it parsing URLs, for example. After all, we're talking PHP here, which has much of the string processing capabilities of Perl (preg_match, for instance). It's not a difficult for a good programmer.

    • Re:That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by igrp ( 732252 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:45PM (#9407852)
      Hmm... To quote the server's main page:

      Welcome to the phpstack demo server! phpstack is a small TCP/IP stack and web server written in PHP. It is a quick and dirty proof-of-concept hack and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

      Well, it clearly says it's a PoC hack so why not cut this author some slack? To be perfectly honest, I think this is rather impressive in more than one way. Sure, this isn't exactly a novel idea but that wasn't the point. It clearly is a show of flexibility. Php wasn't designed with these kinds of applications in mind, yet it seems to handle this kind of stuff impressingly well.

      Also, it testifies to the fact that thinking outside the box is a good thing. I mean, come on, what would you rather see yet another mail client or some cool project that makes you go "hmm, how come I never thought of this"?

      • oye. not again. where's the box that you speak of? what box?

        the only thing that resembles a 'box', that i'm thinking inside of, is my house. i like to be inside it while i think; thank you very much.
      • I'm sure you can write a TCP/IP stack in a turing machine, but why bother it's only vain attempts at glorifying a language which was perfectly fine in the area it was designed for.
        • I'm sure you can write a TCP/IP stack in a turing machine, but why bother it's only vain attempts at glorifying a language which was perfectly fine in the area it was designed for.

          This is the kinda stuff programmers do all the time when they are bored or playing around or trying stuff out. I'm not surprised someone did it, I'm just surprised it was considered worth telling anyone about. It's about as newsworthy as posting your homework solutions

      • Re:That is a VERY limited system.... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Well, it clearly says it's a PoC hack so why not cut this author some slack?

        Well, how about because how he tried to "trick" us into thinking it was a real webserver? Notice all the URLs on his site have fake pieces on the end to make them look like real URLs? http://193.10.67.151:8084/stats.php for instance. The stats.php bit is part of the deception.

        In fact, his "web" server doesn't case WHAT data is sent to those ports, valid URL request or not. As soon as a single packet is sent to it, it sends its
    • That is a typical obnoxious-geek response and should be modded as such.

      Before you call someone else's interesting project "half-baked" and point out that he "didn't figure out" things (implying that you, however, did), why don't you go post YOUR php-based TCP/IP stack and webserver that DOES deal with the issues you mentioned. Then, you can freely criticize his work as much as you'd like, pointing out the solutions instead of highlighting the problems.

      Until then, you should consider keeping comments like
    • Well I'm impressed, the thing is being /.'ed to hell but keeps ticking. I guess the quick redirect helps.

      But then, I'm impressed with myself just for knowing what "php" is an acronym for.

  • Ouch (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Pikhq ( 728580 )
    The thing has a hit counter, currently at 200. 2,000,000 anyone?

  • Alright. (Score:5, Funny)

    by whiteranger99x ( 235024 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:32PM (#9407753) Journal
    Ok everyone, get it out of your systems already! :P

    "whoa 2 comments and it's already slashdotted"
    "whoa dude, shouldn't have let slashdot post your server!"
    "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these guys"

    And i'm sure you can figure out more Slashdotisms people *smirks*

    Seems pretty cool at any rate

    • Re:Alright. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Leffe ( 686621 )
      "Seems as if the demo server is running phpstack."
    • - In Soviet Russia...PHP stacks YOU!

      - WHY DOESN'T SLASHDOT MIRROR THIS PHP TCP/IP STACK AND SAVE THIS POOR BASTARD THE DEATH OF HIS SERVER?

      1. Read /. article about PHP OpenGL
      2. Write equally useless TCP/IP stack in PHP
      3. Write lame webserver utilizing useless TCP/IP stack
      4. ?????

      -JT
    • At this rate of development, it won't be long before somebody has the Linux kernel implemented in PHP.

  • ouch... (Score:5, Funny)

    by zoloto ( 586738 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:33PM (#9407760)
    unlimited number of simultaneous TCP connections

    To the tune of Queen:
    Another one bytes the dust!

    • Re:ouch... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sir_Real ( 179104 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:00PM (#9407928)
      Well... You really were asking for it...

      With apologies to the late F.M.

      Php is a scripting language
      not a layer three network stack
      Ain't no way your server won't break
      Unless you're sitting in a SONET node rack

      Are you crazy? Are you certified
      Your server is a molten heap
      Through the floor the slag still drips
      to the sound of the beep

      Chorus:
      Another one bytes the dust
      Another one bytes the dust
      And another one gone, and another one gone
      Another one bytes the dust
      Hey, I'm gonna slashdot you
      Another one bytes the dust

      How long till my router cacks
      after a weekend slashdot bitch smack
      I invested everything that I had
      even wrote a custom ip stack

      Are you crazy? Are you certified
      Your server is a molten heap
      Through the floor the slag still drips
      to the sound of the beep

      chorus

      There are plenty of ways you can hurt a host
      and bring it to its knees
      you can heat em
      you can drop em
      you can install bad ram
      and even try using Windows ME

      But you're batshit, yes out of your tree
      If you think your isp won't freak
      Through the floor your server melts
      To the sound of the beep

      chorus

  • First thing that went through my mind (Score:3, Informative)

    by Oriumpor ( 446718 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:35PM (#9407779) Homepage Journal
    I gotta see this... and low and behold it looks sllooooow but it came through.

    btw content below:
    The phpstack demo server

    Welcome to the phpstack demo server! phpstack is a small TCP/IP stack and web server written in PHP. It is a quick and dirty proof-of-concept hack and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

    The web pages and pictures on this page are served by the phpstack server. The server only allows very small HTML pages and pictures, but it is able to support an unlimited amount of simultaneous connections.

    Read more about the phpstack on its home page:

    http://www.sics.se/~adam/phpstack/

    You are visitor number 446 and your IP address is XX.XX.XX.XX.

  • Due to the anticipation of the /. effect . . . (Score:5, Informative)

    by dgrgich ( 179442 ) * <drew&grgich,org> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:37PM (#9407791)
    Here's a screenshot [grgich.org] of the phpserver results. Pretty cool stuff.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:38PM (#9407797)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How..? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iantri ( 687643 ) <.iantri. .at. .gmx.net.> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:39PM (#9407803) Homepage
    Err.. I don't know anything about PHP so give me the benefit of the doubt.

    Is PHP able to be run standalone?

    I thought it was parsed by a webserver module when accessed?

    • Re:How..? (Score:3, Informative)

      by ^Case^ ( 135042 )
      PHP has a CLI interpreter. You can run it just like you run perl or whatever.

    • Re:How..? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) *
      There is now (since early 4.x versions) a command line version of PHP, for scripting purposes. All the benifits of mod_php in your scripts, and it is now installed by default along side the apache module. You can also acheive a similiar solution using the cgi binary.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • PSHTTPD - PostScript webserver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Richard_L_James ( 714854 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:42PM (#9407838)
    This php webserver reminds me of HTTPi [floodgap.com] a webserver written in 100% perl. Neither of which are that hard when you know. However Anders "Pugo" Karlsson [pugo.org] wrote a webserver called PS HTTPD [planetmirror.com] in postscript. Now that I found very impressive :)

  • Nanoweb anyone ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by lonedfx ( 80583 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:44PM (#9407846)
    http://nanoweb.si.kz/

    Nanoweb is an HTTP server written in PHP, designed to be small, secure, and extensible.

    It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

    Nanoweb's main features are :

    - HTTP/1.1 compliance
    - Powerful and easy configuration
    - Modular architecture
    - FastCGI, CGI and Server side includes support
    - Name and port based virtual hosts
    - Access control lists
    - htpasswd, MySQL, PostgreSQL and LDAP authentication support
    - Themes for server generated content
    - Apache compatible log format, MySQL logging
    - Directory browsing
    - inetd support and SSL via external helpers
    - Denial of Service protection
    - Proxy Server extension
    - Filters and gzip support
    - RBL support (mail-abuse.org)
    - Extension Protocols (request methods) support
    - ... and a lot more

    lone, dfx.

  • ... unlimited ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:45PM (#9407854) Homepage
    "... to support an unlimited number of simultaneous TCP ..."
    Hey! Wake up, we are on /. and anyone here knows there is nothing unlimited in the universe, but human stupidity.

    • What he obviously means is that there are no artificial limits imposed by his code (i.e. if(connections under 1000) accept Connection). If you can't connect it's not because his code couldn't handle it. The problem could be solved with more RAM or a faster system.

      Ben
  • Nothing new here. I knew a guy who once wrote a mag tape driver in COBOL.

  • cool! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    now we only have to port PHP to wristwatches and commodore 64s to get them on the net.

  • Why? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Billy the Mountain ( 225541 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:04PM (#9407947) Journal
    I think I might know why. Unless I'm missing the boat here, this would lead to making a more efficient web server. If the IP stack, the web server and the dynamic HTML processing is all integrated into one program, it seems to me that you'd have one very efficient html-processing screamer.

    BTM
    • Hey, look! Over there! It's the boat!

      In theory you could have been right, if you were writing in a compiled language: you convert everything into one string of machine instructions which can be optimized as a mass, rather than suffering some of the inefficiencies of a monolithic TCP and IP stack beneath your program that you can't optimize further. That sort of thing does actually happen on microcontrollers.

      However, PHP is a scripting language, so those optimizations don't get made. What could take a

  • I understand... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:09PM (#9407974)
    this is what's taking Duke Nukem Forever so long. It's actually done, but it's all written entirely in PHP and they're waiting for the hardware to catch up.

  • netcat anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tiny69 ( 34486 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:12PM (#9407988) Homepage Journal
    $ telnet 193.10.67.151 80
    Trying 193.10.67.151...
    Connected to 193.10.67.151.
    Escape character is '^]'.

    HTTP/1.0 200 OK
    Content-type: text/html
    Server: phpstack 1.0 (http://www.sics.se/~adam/phpstack/)

    [html]
    [h ead][title]The phpstack demo server[/title][/head]
    [link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://193.10.67.151:8080/style.css"]
    [body ]
    . . .
    . . .
    All I did was hit 'enter' after the connection was established without typing in the GET command. He could have saved some time and used netcat.
  • I don't understand why are you comparing it with other php Websevers. I think this guy is not using the php sockets functions, but his *own* tcp/ip stack, isn't he?
  • Performance & stress tested as well!
  • As proof of this amazing(?) feat of programming, the server still works [193.10.67.151], at least at this moment in time it's still serving its page, though slowly. Despite the author's hacky implementation (serving content depending on what port the request is sent through) I think we must congratulate him - few servers survive a slashdotting for this long. Anyone remember the spud server [totl.net]? (there was a real one too.)

  • Interesting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:53PM (#9408182) Homepage Journal
    Can this web server run PHP applications? If so, can it run the TCP/IP stack and a web server in-- Oh, God, my head!
  • I was visitor 12245, and it's still ticking....

  • From the author (Score:5, Informative)

    by dunkels ( 787490 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @03:30PM (#9408396)
    I am the author of this and I must point out that the phpstack server is actually still running after over two hours of slashdotting! It is extremely slow, however, because of the insane amount of IP packets that have to traverse the 115200 bps serial line that connects the server with the rest of the world. The front page of the server currently reports that it has served 13157 visitors.

    A lot of people that comment here focus solely on the web server part of this software and completely miss the novel part in this: the TCP/IP stack. Writing a simple web server is dead easy. To the best of my knowledge, however, nobody has been stupid enough to write a TCP/IP stack in PHP before :-). The web server running on top of the stack is really simple and can be seen as the equivalent of the "netcat" web server someone suggested.

    The TCP/IP stack is intensionally extremely simplified (or "half-baked", if you wish) and tailored to the specific needs of the simple web server. Someone implied that the reason for the simplifications was that I maybe hadn't "figured out" how to handle fragmented packets. Well, it does not have to do with packet fragmentation (IP fragmentation is not that much of an issue today), but with the TCP receiver not trying to put together incoming TCP segments into a stream. Interested people could take a look at my uIP [www.sics.se] or lwIP [www.sics.se] TCP/IP stacks to see how to solve these problems in the general case. I have also written a paper [www.sics.se] that discuss issues with reducing TCP and IP in more detail.

    Of course, there are also the standard "this guy should get a life" comments. I always find it amusing to see such comments being posted only 10 minutes after the article hit the Slashdot front page, on a Saturday. I'm not the only one in need of a life, it seems :-)

    Finally, all of this is just a quick hack made solely for fun (and in part to learn more about PHP). I submitted it to Slashdot simply because I enjoy seeing articles like this myself. From the insane amount of traffic to my demo server, it seems that quite a lot of other people find it interesting as well :-)

  • On the topic of pointless accomplishments... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fzammett ( 255288 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @04:23PM (#9408642) Homepage
    About three years ago I wrote a very simplistic database server in Prolog on an Atari 800XL. This was of course AFTER I wrote a very simplistic Prolog compiler :) The database server accepted VERY basic SQL queries and could query against data on a floppy OR a cassette drive (yes, it supported cassettes!) and would display the results on the screen, nothing more (well, you could print it too, but I didn't have a printer, so I'm not 100% sure that would have worked).

    Why you ask? Well, I'm frankly not sure I would have ever thought of this "accomplishment" again had I not read many of the responses to the PHP thing...

    A friend of mine and I were having a little debate about how people sometimes do utterly pointless things with computers. We came to the conclusion that hackers in the generic "computer geek that likes to push the boundaries" sense of the word just like to see how far they can push things. They like to see what they can make these machines do that their designers never could have imagined them doing. This PHP thing is a good example of that, but applied to a language rather than hardware.

    Not every project has to have a real purpose behind it. Sometimes just seeing if you can pull something off, no matter how stupid it might seem, is well worth it.

    Oh yeah... my friend's "pointless" project? He wrote a web server on a Timex Sinclair 1000! He wired up an old C64 300 baud modem to the expansion port (so he couldn't use the 16k memory module at the same time), then dialed into his PC and used that as the network layer. IP requests to the web server were forwarded through the phone line, through the modem, and on to the Timex, which served up the pages. Everything was pre-loaded into memory from cassette when the server was started. To this day I don't know how he wrote the code to interface with the modem... I do know that he is an electrical engineering god and that he did have some external components added to the modem, but he told me, and I believe him, that the Timex was in fact controlling the modem. And you thought being limited to 1.5K per page with this PHP thing was crazy! Remember, the Timex had a GRAND TOTAL of 2K built-in! This to me is about as sick (and pointless!) as anything can get.

    Needless to say, his project was far and away more pointless than mine :) Both were fun as hell to do though, made us think in very unconventional ways, and forced us at the end to say "well, that's cool, but what the hell is the point?!?"

    The answer of course is "because we could, but we weren't so sure at the start". And that is many times the only answer you need.
  • In Soviet Russia, PHP runs on TOP of an IP stack.

    Oh wait

    n/m

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