Why and How to Use Netlink Socket
Kevin Kaichuan He · Linux journal · 2005
Use this bidirectional, versatile method to pass data between kernel and user space. Due to the complexity of developing and maintaining the kernel, only the most essential and performance-critical code are placed in the kernel. Other things, such as GUI, management and control code, typically are programmed as user-space applications. This practice of splitting the implementation of certain features between kernel and user space is quite common in Linux. Now the question is how can kernel code and user-space code communicate with each other? The answer is the various IPC methods that exist between kernel and user space, such as system call, ioctl, proc filesystem or netlink socket. This article discusses netlink socket and reveals its advantages as a network feature-friendly IPC.