Progress since INET 4.7

November 2, 2026

Since the release of INET 4.7 in July 2026, most of the work has gone into the correctness of the protocol models, checked against the standards that they implement. The following has landed on the master branch and will be part of the next release.

Protocol tests derived from the standards:

  • a new black-box protocol test framework, in which a test drives a protocol through tap interfaces and checks the frames it sends against the requirements of the RFC

  • tests derived from the standards for ARP, RIP, IPv6 Neighbor Discovery, IGMP and MLD, IPsec, MPLS, TCP and QUIC, together with the repairs of the defects they found

  • TCP tests that run the packetdrill scripts of the Linux kernel selftests against INET’s TCP

TCP:

  • LinuxTcp, a TCP with the defaults of Linux, and many Linux behaviors that are available as parameters: Dynamic Right-Sizing, the receive buffer bound, the path MTU search of RFC 4821 with black-hole detection, SYN data handling, and others

  • HyStart++ (RFC 9406), limited transmit, the urgent data of RFC 9293, and many smaller repairs of the defaults and parameters

IEEE 802.11:

  • immediate Compressed Block Ack as the default, and a reworked Block Ack agreement lifecycle

  • single and multiple protection of a TXOP, EDCA data lifetime and management recovery, and the recipient NAV

  • HT support for 802.11ac interfaces, VHT mode queries, and 5 GHz channel mapping

  • Radiotap headers in PCAP capture

Other areas:

  • queueing elements that answer queries without side effects, an acceptance filter, and repaired schedulers, classifiers, droppers and rate limiters

  • correlated log-normal shadowing, and concurrent transmissions and receptions in the radio

  • IEEE 802.1ad (Q-in-Q) policy, and repaired VLAN tagging in relays

  • PCAPNG writer fixes and a block API, DHCP and ICMP repairs, and IPv4/IPv6 reassembly fixes

The following work is in progress on branches:

  • the second wave of protocol tests derived from the standards, and the repair of Neighbor Discovery, IPv6 tunneling, Mobile IPv6 and Proxy Mobile IPv6

  • the remaining IEEE 802.11 features found missing by the protocol tests, such as delayed Block Ack and A-MPDU in the QoS data service

  • MPLS: PCEP, IPv6 FECs in LDP, and a 6PE example

  • IS-IS, Babel, LISP and VRRP routing protocols

  • a VulkanSceneGraph based 3D visualizer with LIDAR terrain and geospatial scenes

  • new showcases for Mobile IPv6, Proxy Mobile IPv6, IPv6 autoconfiguration, IPv6 tunneling, 10BASE-T1S, the IEEE 802.11 rate anomaly, and geographic mobility

See Plans for what comes after these.

All progress updates