I agree, but I think protocols such as I2C are more suited for this kind of thing... ie they are easier to implement, and don't have the overhead and bandwidth consumption of stuff like headers in the frames . Just as u get TCP/IP stack chips, you also get hardware implementations of I2C and CAN, or chips with these things in-built. And with a little clever programming, I think you can do almost everything (in terms of networking) that you can do with TCP/IP...

Except maybe connect directly to the internet :-))

But I cannot say where TCP/IP would have a definite advantage over other protocols, other than the issue of distance. Maybe more complicated networks?

kundi