Lee Cross wrote:
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Thanks for the tip guys. I spent a few hours looking into some of the hardware TCP/IP solutions. The search has left me with the impression that I would have to read a thick TCP/IP manual cover to cover before I could tackle a real project.

As long as you don't have to use a specific protocol, using TCP is very easy. Create a socket, "listen" on one end and connect from the other end. Then you just read/write data - as little or as much as you want. When you're done you just close the sockets.

Mikkel:

Thanks for the link to the IIM70x0 modules. They look like a good approach to the TCP/IP problem. They are about the right price for what I want to do. I must admit that I am a bit apprehensive to start using one of those, though. Perhaps a simple UDP application wouldn't be beyond my abilities,

I would never use UDP. If you use UDP your data may arrive out of order, and you have to do all the error checking yourself. When you use TCP the data always arrives in the correct order, and you don't have to worry about error checking. If there are errors you will be "told" so.

but I could see a TCP project sucking up a good deal of my summer that should be spent on other things.

If your summer holiday is only 2 or 3 days I quite agree ;-) My first TCP/IP tests worked the first day. They were done on OS/2, but Unix or the IIM modules should be just as easy - I don't know about Windows.

I recently took a class on computer networks. Unfortunately the professor chose to focus primarily on the OSI model instead of TCP/IP. The impression that I got from the class is that computer networking is complicated and time consuming. That is why I am reluctant to jump into something like TCP/IP.. Unless of course I have misjudged the beast. Maybe its not as bad as I think, or perhaps those chips take care of all the dirty work.

If you're writing your own stack, it is very complicated and time consuming. But when you only have to worry about the applications and not the networking bits it should be very simple.

Have either of you used TCP/IP for projects such as dataloggers or machine control?

Yes, but only PC based untill now - I'll know more about 8051 based projects in a month or two...

Roughly how long would you estimate a person with an eval board and a C compiler would take to establish communication using TCP? Are we talking weeks or months?

If the IIM modules work as adverticed, I would guess less than a week.

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen