IL (network protocol)

Internet protocol suite
Application layer
DHCP DHCPv6 DNS FTP HTTP IMAP IRC LDAP MGCP NNTP NTP POP RPC RTP RTSP SIP SMTP SNMP SOCKS SSH Telnet TLS/SSL XMPP (more)
Transport layer
TCP UDP DCCP SCTP RSVP RIP BGP ECN (more)
Internet layer
IP IPv4 IPv6 ICMP ICMPv6 IGMP OSPF IPsec (more)
Link layer
ARP/InARP NDP Tunnels L2TP PPP Media access control Ethernet DSL ISDN FDDI (more)

The Internet Link protocol or IL is a connection-based transport layer protocol designed at Bell Labs originally as part of the Plan 9 operating system and is used to carry 9P. It is assigned the Internet Protocol number of 40. It is similar to TCP but much simpler.

Its main features are:

• Reliable datagram service
• In-sequence delivery
• Internetworking using IP
• Low complexity, high performance
• Adaptive timeouts

As of the Fourth Edition of Plan 9, 2003, IL is deprecated in favor of TCP/IP because it doesn't handle long-distance connections well.[1]

External links

• Dave Presotto; Phil Winterbottom. "The IL protocol". http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/il/. —The original paper describing IL