## Problem
A connection's send buffer is a fixed 256 KB. A burst of world traffic (a crowded area, a mass spawn, a war) that outruns the client's acknowledgements fills it, `NetState.Send()` reports "send buffer exhausted", and the player is disconnected. Raising the size for everyone multiplies the per-connection footprint (4096 × 256 KB is already 1 GB at full occupancy, page-locked on Windows).
## What changes
- **Growth.** When a packet does not fit (the write span is too small, the packet is larger than the span, or compression returns 0), `Send()` asks the transport to grow the buffer to the next power-of-two tier and retries, up to `network.sendBufferMaxSize` (2 MB). Compression retries once per tier since its output size is not known in advance, including when the buffer is completely full. Only when growth is refused does the existing exhaustion disconnect run. The success path is unchanged.
- **Memory ceiling.** Growth is refused (with a once-a-minute warning) when the process working set exceeds `network.memoryCeilingPercent` (80) of the memory available to the process (container-aware; `0` turns the check off). The figure is sampled at startup and refreshed each maintenance tick.
- **Shrink.** A grown socket returns to the base buffer once it is drained and 30 s have passed since its last growth, attempted from the `DataSent` handler and from the 5 s alive sweep.
- **Retention.** Every minute a timer calls the transport's `Maintain()`, which trims idle tier slabs down to the peak concurrent usage of the last 15 minutes, so recurring bursts reuse buffers without allocation while rare ones give the memory back. The line logs at Debug, and only when capacity, usage, or the floor changed or a growth was refused (budget, at max, or ceiling), so an idle shard logs nothing.
- **Budget.** `network.sendBufferGrowthBudget` (256 MB) caps the tier pools' capacity; a positive value below one tier slab is raised with a warning, a negative one is clamped to 0 (growth off). Worst case is base × connections plus the budget.
- Settings are coerced with accurate warnings (power of two, minimum, 256 MB transport ceiling). `[dumpnetstates` gains the send buffer size. `dev-docs/server-requirements.md` describes the new memory story.
## Tests
`NetStateSendBufferTests` (real loopback sockets): growth instead of disconnect with a byte-exact stream, compressed growth against the compressor's own output, the grow-then-copy path, growth with a send genuinely in flight, refusal past the maximum, refusal under the ceiling, refusal on a closing socket, shrink after the hold (direct and through the alive sweep), and the setting coercions. Server.Tests 891 passed, UOContent.Tests 1052 passed against the published 1.0.12.
Reviewed per task, whole-branch, and adversarially by a second model (twice, the second time jointly with the transport branch); all findings addressed.
> [!IMPORTANT]
> **Breaking Changes**
> - DecodePacket and EncodePacket delegates replaced with IClientEncryption interface
> - NetState.Connection (Socket) replaced with internal RingSocket management
> - NetState.RecvPipe and NetState.SendPipe removed (buffers managed internally)
## Summary
Upgrades the networking stack from PollGroup-based I/O to io_uring, significantly improving I/O performance on Linux.
This also adds native client encryption support for encrypted UO clients.
## Major Changes
io_uring Networking Architecture
- Replaced PollGroup with IORingGroup for async socket I/O operations
- Removed Pipe.cs (mirrored ring buffer) and TcpServer.cs in favor of RingSocketManager
- Added NetState.Network.cs - centralized network infrastructure handling accept, recv, send, and disconnect
completions
- Added SocketHelper.cs - platform-specific socket utilities for raw socket handle operations (getpeername,
getsockname)
- Buffer management now handled by RingSocketManager with configurable slab allocation
### Client Encryption Support
- Added full encryption stack in Network/Encryption/:
- EncryptionConfig.cs - configurable encryption modes (None, Unencrypted, Encrypted, Both)
- EncryptionManager.cs - encryption detection and initialization for login/game packets
- LoginEncryption.cs - handles login packet encryption with version-derived keys
- GameEncryption.cs - handles game server encryption using Twofish
- TwofishEngine.cs - optimized Twofish block cipher implementation
- LoginKeys.cs - encryption key table for client versions
- IClientEncryption.cs - interface for client encryption implementations
### NetState Improvements
- Replaced Socket Connection with RingSocket _socket for managed socket lifecycle
- Changed from GCHandle polling to event-based completion processing
- Disconnect handling now properly waits for pending sends to flush
- Simplified connecting socket management using lazy queue removal
### Configuration
- New settings: network.encryptionMode and network.encryptionDebug
- Encryption mode flags: Unencrypted, Encrypted, or Both
### Dependencies
- Replaced PollGroup NuGet package with IORingGroup
- Linux requires liburing-dev / liburing-devel package
### Test plan
- Verify server starts and accepts connections on Linux with io_uring
- Verify server starts and accepts connections on Windows (fallback to IOCP)
- Test unencrypted client connections (ClassicUO with encryption disabled)
- Test encrypted client connections if available
- Verify graceful disconnect flushes pending data
- Confirm CI builds pass on all target platforms
### Summary
- Fixes `[AdvancedSearch` being accessible by players 😱
- Adds `[GenCommands` to generate the same commands html page on https://muo.gg/commands.
- Fixes `[helpinfo` so all commands properly show up!
> [!WARNING]
> ### Developer Warning:
> Commands must now be registered in the `Configure` bootup phase.
> If a command is not registered early enough, it may not be available to systems like [helpinfo
> that cache their information.
> [!NOTE]
> ### Developer Note:
> Various commands related to generating content have been changed to _Developer_ and above access level.
### Screenshots
<img width="673" alt="image" src="https://github.com/modernuo/ModernUO/assets/3953314/b105b5c9-5eb4-4ace-93ff-1bfb31e7132f">
<img width="547" alt="image" src="https://github.com/modernuo/ModernUO/assets/3953314/e97487e8-47a5-4aa7-89cc-9fe3deda584d">
## Breaking Changes
* The Firewall and IP Limiter have been rewritten. Please read the notes carefully!
* `TcpServer.Instances` moved back to `NetState.Instances` - sorry - it was stupid to move it to begin with.
> [!Note]
> Sockets that fail the IP Limiter or Firewall will be immediately and forcibly disconnected.
> This means they will be stuck at "Verifying account..." if it was a real client.
### Summary
- Removes firewall wildcard support.
- Removes `AccessRestrictions`.
- Moves Firewall/IPLimiter to the core.
- Moves `TcpServer` to its own thread.
- Removes the `SocketConnect` and `SocketDisconnect` event sinks.
- Moves `Instances` back to `NetState.Instances`.
- Fixes a long standing bug with bad handling of duplicate listener addresses.
#### Firewall
The firewall has been completely rewritten. There is now an "Admin Firewall" which saves to the config file. Secondarily, there is an internal firewall used exclusively by the TcpServer while processing sockets. The Admin firewall mirrors it's additions/deletions to the internal firewall by adding requests to a queue.
> [!IMPORTANT]
> **Wildcard firewall entries, such as `X`, `*`, `?` are not allowed.**
> **Ranges in between IP classes or sextets are not allowed.**
> **Please make sure to use one of the following:**
> * IP Address - `192.168.1.1`
> * CIDR - `192.168.1.0/24`
> * Range - `192.168.1.1-192.168.1.100`
#### IP Limiter
The IP Limiter has been completely rewritten. The available configurations are:
```json
"ipLimiter.enable": "True",
"ipLimiter.maxConnectionsPerIP": 10,
"ipLimiter.clearConnectionAttemptsDuration": "00:00:00:10",
"ipLimiter.clearThrottledDuration": "00:00:02:00",
```
The IP Limiter is set up to prevent spamming connections from the same IP. Every time an IP connects, it is added to a connection list. After 10 attempts, the IP is added to the throttle list. To keep the system fast, the connection list is entirely wiped every 10 seconds, and the throttle list is entirely wiped every 2 minutes.
**Only one functional change**
* Fixes a bug in LogFactory where `Warning` is being logged as `Information`
Non-functional changes:
* Updates/Fixes copyright headers
* Removes namespace scopes for core files.
View with [whitespace off](https://github.com/modernuo/ModernUO/pull/1187/files?w=1).
- [X] Removes network pause/resume
- [X] Adds back packet profiler
- [X] Adds state machine to keep track and trace netstates
- [X] Changes NetState.Running back to using an interlock exchange
- [X] Adds preliminary packet throttling support
### Packet Throttling
- `[GetThrottle <packetId>` to get the delay in milliseconds for that packet
- `[SetThrottle <packetId> <delay>` to set the delay in milliseconds for that packet
The settings are saved to `Configuration/throttles.json`
