Re: [avr-chat] TCP/IP : practical guide to implementing ? (LONG post...)

[Dustin Lang]

Hi,

I don't know anything about what software is available for
microcontrollers, but one time I started writing a network stack (for
intel 8088).

As you might guess from the name, TCP/IP uses layers of protocols.

You can about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

TCP uses IP.

IP uses Ethernet (or PPP or SLIP or ATM or ...).

UDP also uses IP, and is *much* simpler to implement.  You might want to
read about that, because you will need it.

Ethernet sends packets using MAC addresses.

MAC addresses are resolved using ARP.

To get an IP address, you (most likely) want DHCP.

DHCP uses UDP.

To resolve domain names to IP addresses, you want DNS.

DNS uses UDP.



Did you follow all that? :)

To get an IP address, you need software to handle:
 -ARP
 -IP
 -UDP
 -DHCP


Wikipedia is a place to start reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhcp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Datagram_Protocol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol

The authoritative definition (I think) of all these protocols are the
RFCs:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html

The organization that hands out numbers (like MAC address ranges is):
http://www.iana.org/


Good luck,
dstn.