Understanding TCP Zero-Copy: How Linux Kernel Eliminates Data Copying Overhead

TCP zero-copy is a feature of the Linux kernel that makes it possible to send and receive data without incurring an extra copy between kernel memory and the memory buffer that holds the final data

Copying data adds overhead, so avoiding it is appealing

The kernel features that enable this are quite new, and figuring out exactly how they work under the hood is not trivial

So in this post I'll try to summarise what exactly is going on under the hood when these features are used