In order to achieve the above goals we have decided to implement the ICAP protocol on top of JBoss Netty as a codec. The advantage of doing this is that Netty is already providing a HTTP codec which can be integrated into the ICAP protocol codec. The encapsulated HTTP request and response objects are therefore the Netty HTTP request and response implementations.
Netty can be used as a stand alone server or client and you can integrate it into a servlet container or JEE environment. NIO and OIO sockets and streams are supported out of the box and the entire socket api complexity is abstracted. The performance of Netty is outstanding and is therefore in combination with our ICAP codec a real alternative to c or c++ based solutions.