Low-overhead TCP/IP stack for embedded Internet

A Computer Solutions product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Apr 4, 2001

Available now from Computer Solutions, CMX-MicroNet is a TCP/IP stack for the 8/16bit embedded market.

Available now from Computer Solutions, CMX-MicroNet is a TCP/IP stack for the 8/16bit embedded market.

Produced by CMX Systems, MicroNet is the first commercial offering to provide true TCP/IP capabilities that can be implemented for any 8 or 16bit micro.

MicroNet allows TCP/IP and other protocols to be run directly on small processors.

No proprietary protocols, gateways, or additional hardware are required.

MicroNet is a low-cost software product that enables virtually any micro to communicate using standard Internet protocols.

It provides direct serial links, PPP based modem communications or Ethernet drivers.

A web server application that runs on the micro can use any of these to talk to a normal PC based browser using the http protocol.

The user can then set values on the micro, cause functions to be executed and read back variables displayed by the browser.

In this way full access to the micro is provided via the browser's familiar windows GUI.

Operating without needing an RTOS, CMX-MicroNet provides TCP, PPP, UDP, SLIP, IP, ARP, RARP protocols and an HTTP Web Server.

Support is currently provided for dial up and direct RS232 connections or for the popular CS8900 Ethernet chip.

Drivers will soon be available for additional Ethernet and multidrop interfaces as well as FTP, mail and SNMP applications.

To give an example of how compact this package is, 8051 implementations of MicroNet use only 5Kbyte of ROM for the UDP/IP configuration.

A web server requires less than 16Kbyte of ROM for TCP/IP, PPP, modem, HTTP web server as well as a virtual file system to hold the web pages.

This compares favourably with other commercially available TCP/IP stacks which typically require more than 64Kbyte of ROM plus 64Kbyte of RAM for the stack alone, which makes them unsuitable for 8bit and many 16bit applications.

"MicroNet opens up a vast new area for embedded systems designers", said Chris Stephens MD of Computer Solutions.

"Most developers using the popular 8 and 16bit processors had given up hope of using the internet protocol to communicate with their products because the stacks were simply too big.

Having these protocols running directly on 8bit processor means that even the smallest application can now use well established standards for local and remote link.

By doing so they can take advantage of the many useful application packages that employ the Internet protocols.

In particular, the ease of interfacing to a browser, perhaps enhanced with Java, provides an easily understood and simply implemented Windows front end for any micro applications.

No longer do micro-based products need to include cryptic command line interpreters to handle engineering setups.

It is only necessary to create a web page replica of a control panel with data readouts, settings and control buttons.

Moreover alternative versions can be created to give engineers more control or to keep it simple for the end user".

Implementations of CMX-MicroNet are currently available for the 8051 family, Atmel AVR and Zilog Z80/180 8bit processors and the Hitachi 300H, H8S, Infineon 80C16x, Mitsubishi M16C and Philips 51-XA series of 16bit processors.

As it is written in C, porting to other processors and legacy applications is easy.