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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.

Header

struct IPIL
{
    byte    vihl;       /* Version and header length */
    byte    tos;        /* Type of service */
    byte    length;  /* packet length */
    byte    id;      /* Identification */
    byte    frag;    /* Fragment information */
    byte    ttl;        /* Time to live */
    byte    proto;      /* Protocol */
    byte    cksum;   /* Header checksum */
    byte    src;     /* Ip source */
    byte    dst;     /* Ip destination */
    byte    ilsum;   /* Checksum including header */
    byte    illen;   /* Packet length */
    byte    iltype;     /* Packet type */
    byte    ilspec;     /* Special */
    byte    ilsrc;   /* Src port */
    byte    ildst;   /* Dst port */
    byte    ilid;    /* Sequence id */
    byte    ilack;   /* Acked sequence */
};

See also

• Fast Local Internet Protocol

References

1. "Plan 9 — Fourth Edition Release Notes". Lucent Technologies. June 2003. Retrieved August 3, 2018. We are phasing out the IL protocol since it doesn't handle long-distance connections well (and long-distance networks don't handle it well, either). IL is still used by fs(4) but TCP has become the standard protocol for all other services.

Further reading

• Dave Presotto; Phil Winterbottom. "The IL protocol".—The original paper describing IL

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• Inferno (operating system)
• Internet Protocol based network software
• Network protocols
• Plan 9 from Bell Labs
• Transport layer protocols
• Telecommunications stubs