A Java API for Low-Level Socket Network Access

Modern military computer applications are increasingly using the Java computer language. While Java provides a versatile cross-platform computing environment with strong security and ease-of-use (java.net.Socket), this support is limited to traditional TCP/IP socket-style communications, and lacks the ability for the programmer to directly access lower levels of the network protocol stack, such as raw sockets. Creare proposes the development of a Java API which uses a native code library allowing Java programs to manipulate raw sockets through a consistent and secure interface. This API would allow Java programs to directly implement low-level networking sockets, such as packet filtering, packet sniffing and manipulation of low-level IP or transport layer data. In Phase I, we will research implementing raw sockets in Java, report on the feasibility and implications of such an implementation, and create an application that demonstrates a subset of this prototype API. In Phase II, we will further develop the API to include a broad range of raw socket features (including support for higher level network stack protocols and headers, such as TCP and UDP). The end result of Phase II will be a complete raw socket API that can be used in a wide variety of Java networking applications.