Efficent handling of sockets

[Ken Burtch]

Any socket gurus out there?

I had a question from a guy at work writing his own socket server in C. 
He is writing an application which needs to handle thousands of users.

He would like to know the most efficient way of servicing sockets.  Although 
he blocks on sockets with a select(2) call to the kernel, he must still 
search thorugh the select list to determine which socket needs to be 
serviced.  He would like to know if there is a more efficient way to 
handle the socket stack.  In particular, he heard that there is a way to 
have the kernel call a C function to processess particular sockets but he 
doesn't know how to set that up nor is he certain if he has to use a 
custom kernel module to achive this.  Can anyone give him pointers 
on how to make searching through the select(2) results more efficient or 
give him a more efficient alternative to select(2) for managing large 
numbers of sockets?

Thanks,
Ken B.

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Ken O. Burtch                                       Phone/Fax: 905-562-0848
   "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"                  Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
   "Perl Phrasebook"                 Blog: http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder.html
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