Fuchsia's Netstack3 with Bruno Dal Bo Silva

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Oct 7, 2025

Bruno Dal Bo Silva, a Staff Software Engineer at Google, discusses his journey from Brazil to systems programming, focusing on networking and Rust. He dives into the development of Netstack3 for Fuchsia, highlighting the shift from Go to Rust and its impact on performance. Bruno explains the intricacies of protocols like DHCP and IPv6 SLAAC, sharing insights on memory management and zero-copy techniques. He also explores the potential of Netstack3 beyond Google, emphasizing the benefits of open-sourcing for robust contributions to the connectivity landscape.

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ANECDOTE

Journey From Firmware To Netstack3

Bruno Dal Bo Silva described his path from Brazil through firmware, DSP, Bluetooth, to joining Google's Fuchsia networking team.
He learned Rust on the job and fell in love with it, which shaped his work on Netstack3.

INSIGHT

Why Fuchsia Uses User-Space Networking

Fuchsia is a microkernel-based modern OS that runs most services in user space, including the network stack.
Moving Netstack from Go to Rust reduced runtime costs and improved deterministic memory control.

ADVICE

Favor Familiar POSIX Sockets

Keep a POSIX-compatible socket API to aid developer familiarity and adoption on a new OS.
Expose expected socket options and ancillary metadata to match developer expectations over IPC.

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Episode 8 – Fuchsia's Netstack3 with Bruno Dal Bo Silva.

In this episode our guest is Bruno Dal Bo Silva, Staff Software Engineer at Google. We will dive into his path into networking and Rust, and the story behind netstack3, the Rust-based networking stack built for Google’s Fuchsia operating system. We cover its origins from the Go-based netstack, why Rust was chosen, and the challenges of implementing a full range of protocols — from TCP and UDP with their POSIX socket API to the many less-visible but essential pieces like ARP, ICMP, IPv6, DHCP, and more. We hope you brought a bowl as you're in or a juicy letter soup with this one. Bruno also shares insights on where he sees the future of netstack3 — including its potential beyond Google.

Learn more:

https://fuchsia.dev/
netstack3 source code: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/master/src/connectivity/network/netstack3/
netstack3 publishing tracking bug: https://fxbug.dev/448156020
Fast UDP I/O for Firefox in Rust: https://max-inden.de/post/fast-udp-io-in-firefox
RFC 2462 - SLAAC: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2462
smoltcp (Rust TCP/IP stack for embedded): https://github.com/m-labs/smoltcp

Rama

If you like this podcast you might also like our modular network framework in Rust: https://ramaproxy.org

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:42 Introduction to Bruno and his Journey
04:37 Bruno's Engineering Background and Its Impact
06:56 Exploring Fuchsia: Overview and Architecture
10:08 Transitioning to NetStack 3: The Rust Revolution
17:35 Diving into Networking Protocols: Life of a Packet
24:45 Understanding ARP and Ethernet Protocols
28:00 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Explained
34:41 The Future of Networking: IPv6 and Happy Eyeballs
40:52 QUIC Protocol: User Space vs Kernel Space
46:53 More about netstack3 and unsafe code usage
55:22 Async usage in Netstack3
01:00:36 Comparing netstack3 with smolltcp
01:04:50 Running your own TCP stack on the linux platform
01:06:25 Roadmap to get fuchsia on crates.io
01:11:37 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions
01:15:32 Outro

Netstack.FM

More information: https://netstack.fm/#episode-8
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/29EetaSYCD
Reach out to us: hello@netstack.fm

Music for this episode was composed by Dj Mailbox. Listen to his music at https://on.soundcloud.com/4MRyPSNj8FZoVGpytj.