WebAssembly / WebAssembly/WASI
[Feature Request] Raw Socket Support for Network Discovery Use Cases
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Description
Hello team 👋
I'm exploring WASM as a sandboxed plugin runtime for network monitoring and discovery tools. The goal is to allow modular components to perform network operations within a controlled, capability-gated environment. However, the current lack of raw socket support in WASI makes this architecture infeasible for many common network discovery patterns.
Specific Operations Requiring Raw Sockets
| Operation | Socket Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| ARP Scanning | AF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW |
Layer 2 device discovery on local network |
| ICMP Ping | AF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_ICMP |
Host reachability detection |
| NDP (IPv6) | AF_INET6, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_ICMPV6 |
IPv6 neighbor discovery |
| DHCP Capture | AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM on ports 67/68 |
Passive network monitoring |
Q:
- Has raw socket support been previously discussed and rejected?
- Would a limited subset (e.g., ICMP only) be more acceptable than full raw socket access?
Thanks a lot!
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing WASI's existing networking scope and the raw-socket operations listed in the issue; the work is complete only after maintainers decide whether raw sockets or a limited subset should be supported and define the accepted scope.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- wasm
- Domain
- networking, operating-systems
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100