NAME
     lab 18 - mux

DESCRIPTION
     Much of my recent reading has led me back to various
     implementations of a multiplexer. This is an important and
     powerful abstraction and I want to understand it better. I
     know very little about it now. I'd like to implement one in
     limbo, for example to multiplex the link between sam and
     samterm as suggested in the paper. Hence my interest in sam
     in the earlier lab.

     Here is a some of the things I've been reading recently
     about multiplexers. See if you see a pattern. J. Hickey's
     Master thesis at MIT implements for plan9 which puts a 9p
     multiplexer into user space and provides asynchonous IO for
     user threads.

     Search 9fans for where there is some interesting discussion
     on the use of multiplexers in plan9.

     For example, an by rog and russ's And futher proposals by
     russ for mux, 9p multiplexing and 9p multiplexing.

     See also an implementation of a generic rpc multiplexer,
     libmux, in

     The various window systems by Rob Pike, mux, 8½, and rio are
     multiplexers for their environment, the screen, mouse and
     keyboard.

     The spree game engine is a multiplexer at the application
     leve for the object hierarchy managed by the server.

     And in inferno /emu/port/devmnt.c is the multiplexer for 9p.

     In the original paper the authors argued the principal
     function of an operating system is to multiplex access to
     hardware, and should do nothing else. Multiplexers are vital
     to providing 9p service and in protium the authors argue
     they are a vital piece of infrastructure for distributed
     applications. 

     In summary, this is something I need to learn more about.
     I'll proceed in these labs with studying the code to libmux
     and devmnt and try to implement the mux for the sam session.

                         Inferno Manual