Composable network stacks and remote monads

Abstract

Monads and applicative functors are two ways that Haskell programmers bundle effectful primitives into effectful program fragments. In this paper, we investigate using monads and applicative functors to bundle remote effectful primitives, specifically aiming to amortize the cost of remote communications using bundling. We look at several ways of maximizing the bundling of primitives, drawing from the remote monad design pattern and Haxl system, and provide a taxonomy of mechanism for amortization, with examples. The result of this investigation is that monadic fragments can be efficiently bundled into packets, almost for free, when given a user-supplied packet transportation mechanism, and the primitives obey some simple pre- and post-conditions.