Mini Network Distrib Protocol

A collection of from-scratch, zero-dependency C implementations of network protocols, distributed systems, and communication frameworks. Each module models real networking and distributed computing behavior — from TCP/UDP sockets to RPC frameworks, consensus protocols, distributed transactions, and API gateways. Modules map to MIT, Stanford, CMU courses, bridging network theory to runnable C code.

Modules

Module	Topics	Key References
mini-network-base	TCP/UDP socket programming, IP packet structure, DNS resolver, TLS handshake model, HTTP/1.1 basics	MIT 6.829, Stanford CS144
mini-app-protocol	HTTP/2 frames, gRPC/Protobuf, WebSocket frames, MQTT pub/sub, RESTful design	HTTP/2 RFC 9113, gRPC, MQTT 5.0
mini-dist-protocol	Raft consensus (leader election, log replication), Paxos, Gossip protocol, SWIM membership	Raft paper, Paxos Made Simple
mini-dist-system-theory	CAP theorem, FLP impossibility, Lamport clocks, vector clocks, CRDT, Byzantine generals	MIT 6.824, Kleppmann DDIA
mini-dist-transaction	2PC/3PC, Saga pattern, TCC (Try-Confirm-Cancel), distributed locking, idempotency	CMU 15-721, Percolator, Spanner
mini-gateway-proxy	Reverse proxy, load balancer (round-robin/least-conn/consistent-hash), API gateway, circuit breaker	NGINX, Envoy, Netflix OSS
mini-rpc-framework	RPC encoding (JSON/MsgPack/binary), transport (TCP/HTTP), service registry, stub generation	gRPC, Thrift, Dubbo

Design Philosophy

• Zero external dependencies — pure C (C99/C11), only libc and libm
• Self-contained modules — each directory has its own Makefile, include/, src/, examples/, demos/, tests/
• Protocol simulation in user-space — educational models of network protocols and distributed algorithms
• Theory-to-code mapping — every module includes docs/ with paper-alignment notes
• Practical demos — Raft cluster simulator, HTTP/2 frame builder, RPC framework, load balancer, and more

Building

Each module is standalone. Navigate to a module directory and run:

cd mini-dist-protocol
make all    # build everything
make test   # run tests

Requires GCC and GNU Make.

Project Structure

mini-network-dist-proto/
├── mini-network-base/          # Network Fundamentals
├── mini-app-protocol/          # Application Protocols
├── mini-dist-protocol/         # Distributed Protocols (Raft, Paxos)
├── mini-dist-system-theory/    # Distributed System Theory
├── mini-dist-transaction/      # Distributed Transactions
├── mini-gateway-proxy/         # Gateways & Proxies
└── mini-rpc-framework/         # RPC Frameworks

License

MIT