PowerNet TCP/IP Stack

Last updated 25 February 2005

• High degree of portability
• Modular design
• Speed efficient
• Small memory footprint
• Simple high level API
• Royalty free
• User configurable
• Choice of transport layers
• Remote firmware update capability
• TFTP server for remote upgrades
• Echo Server
• Multi-threaded Telnet server
• Multi-threaded Web server with ASP and CGI facilities

PowerNet v3.0, the MPE TCP/IP and UDP/IP Stacks, is a Forth implementation of the TCP and UDP Internet Protocol layers. The IP network protocol is one of the best supported systems available today on both Local and Wide Area Networks. The UDP Protocol allows for simple transmission and reception of data packets, is small and fast, and is useful for simpler and higher bandwidth applications. The TCP protocol is the heart of the Internet and high level networking. Using PowerNet, your applications can talk to a local PC or to remote systems all over the world.

PowerNet has now been ported to VFX Forth for Windows using Winsock, providing the same features with very little source code change. See VFX Forth for more details.

PowerNet v3.0 is a major upgrade from earlier versions, and incorporates the improvements from six years of field experience, plus performance and code size improvements. In particular the multi-threaded server architecture in PowerNet v3.0 is completely new.

Applications using this stack include PABXs, ISDN routers, access control systems, dataloggers and biometric scanners. PowerNet is regularly used with ARM, H8S and 68xxx CPUs.

You can download the user manual. This and the code manual are supplied on the PowerNet CD.

Royalty Free

No restrictions or hidden costs. Simply buy the software and use it. PowerNet requires a 32 bit Forth system as provided by the MPE Forth cross compilers.

High degree of portability

The PowerNet code can be reconfigured for different CPU targets via a simple set of definitions. The user simply needs to supply the hardware drivers required.

Modular design

The software is supplied with example drivers for both Ethernet and Serial interfaces. These drivers can form the template for any implementation.

Small memory footprint

Powernet uses a near copyless implementation for good performance and low memory footprint. PowerNet v3.0 is smaller and significantly faster than its previous releases. A full build on an ARM including the Forth open interpreter/compiler, RTOS support, three serial drivers, Ethernet driver, UDP and TCP, and Echo, Telnet and HTTP (with ASP, CGI and ForthScript) servers requires 116kb of ROM.

Simple high level API

PowerNet can use console I/O words such as KEY and EMIT to provide network communications. This approach allows existing software to use TCP/IP networking without modification. A subset of the familiar BSD/Winsock API and many other low-level functions are also provided.

Choice of transport layers

PowerNet can support either direct Ethernet hardware or SLIP (Serial Line IP). Its routing table and despatch mechanisms permit a PowerNet system to have several I/O ports of different types, including Ethernet and SLIP ports with IP forwarding.

ICMP support

PowerNet support for ICMP protocol allows for quick and easy network testing via the industry standard PING program.

TFTP support

PowerNet support for the TFTP protocol allows your embedded applications to be remotely updated across a network or the Internet.

Telnet

PowerNet multi-threaded Telnet implementation allows your embedded applications to be remotely managed across the network with a user-defined level of access to the embedded Forth interpreter. Hooks are provided for user-defined server announcement messages and login. Any standard Telnet client such as the Windows client of HyperTerminal Personal Edition may be used.

Web Server

PowerNet multi-threaded HTTP implementation allows your embedded applications to serve Web pages. CGI and ASP facilities are provided, and the underlying Forth interpreter may be used (at your discretion) as part of the ForthScript system. Application hooks allow: pages to be stored in memory, DataFlash or in files; user defined authentication; user defined scripting.

PowerNet consists of:

• Complete source for the stack
• Full source-code documentation and glossary
• Terminal emulator for Windows Operating systems
• Ethernet and SLIP drivers
• Demonstration code such as SMTP email
• Demonstration HTML and ASP pages
• Manuals describing the implementation, setup issues and the source code