Re: nmap parallelization

[Brandon Enright <bmenrigh () ucsd edu>]

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On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:11:58 -0800 (PST)
Kantor Zsolt <kantorzsolt () yahoo com> wrote:

> Hi, nmap uses parallelization to increase scan speed. I searched in
> nmap source code to see what kind of library, functions are used for
> that purpose. I searched for ptherad, the GNU pth . . . but nothing
> found. My question is how is implemented then the parallelization in
> nmap ? What kind of API is used for that ?
>
> Thanks, 
>   Kantor

All of Nmap's parallelization is implemented by Nmap itself and isn't a
threading/forking/cloning/multi-process model.  Most of it is done via
NSOCK's callback architecture.

You'll want to look at UltraScan() in scan_engine.cc and the NSOCK
library in nsock/

Threading in NSE uses Lua which implements interpreter-level (not
OS/kernel) threads.

Threading is one of the least portable features out there.  Event with
good standards like pthreads, Windows and many other OSes do threading
differently.  Java is a great example of a program that has had to
contend varying thread support across platforms.  Nmap side-steps the
problem.

Brandon

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