ENet

ENet is an open source, robust, simple, free and thin library software designed to provide a network communication layer on top of the UDP (User Datagram Protocol) protocol, on Linux kernel-based and UNIX-like operating systems.

Features at a glance

Key features include connection management, sequencing, channels, reliability, fragmentation, reassembly, aggregation, adaptability, portability and freedom. The library is mostly used as a UDP networking layer for Cube, which is a multiplayer first person shooter video game.

ENet's primary goal is to provide reliable, in-order delivery of packets. However, keep in mind that is should not be used as a high level networking library for handling encryption, compression, lobbying, authentication, server discovery, or any other high level functions.

Getting started with ENet

To install ENet on your GNU/Linux system, you will have to download the latest version from Softoware or the official website, save it on a location of your choice, extract it and open a terminal emulator.

On the terminal window, navigate to the location of the extracted folder and type the “./configure && make” command, without quotes, to configure and compile the library for your hardware architecture (32-bit and 64-bit) and operating system.

After a successful compilation, you can install the program system wide by running the “make install” command (without quotes) as root or with sudo, depending on your Linux system. The program is written entirely in the C programming language, which means that it is fast and small.

What is new in this release:

• Added maximumPacketSize and maximumWaitingData fields to ENetHost to limit the amount of data waiting to be delivered on a peer (beware that the default maximumPacketSize is 32MB and should be set higher if desired as should maximumWaitingData).

What is new in version 1.3.1:

• Throttling was implemented for reliable packet data.
• Several bugs involving reliable data accounting were fixed.