Socket I/O mode epoll,overlapped I/O

Question

I am working client server application where I need to manage multiple socket connection 1000+.

By exploration I found out the Overlapped I/O or Completion Port is nice to do de-multiplexing multiple socket in Windows and epoll is nice on Linux.

1. Is epoll is different from Overlapped I/O or Completion Port in windows.
2. I wanted to use boost since it works on both windows and Linux.

Is it possible to implement these techniques (epoll and Overlapped I/O or Completion Port) using boost?

Answer 1

The implementation of epoll on Linux and I/O completion ports on Windows are different, however Boost.Asio nicely abstracts away the differences for your application. This is the whole point of the io_service reactor queue:

Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista

Demultiplexing mechanism:

• Uses overlapped I/O and I/O completion ports for all asynchronous socket operations except for asynchronous connect.
• Uses select for emulating asynchronous connect.

Linux Kernel 2.6

Demultiplexing mechanism:

• Uses epoll for demultiplexing.