[ECOS] "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[ECOS] "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[Tarmo Kuuse]

Hi!

I wish to add basic "plug-and-play" networking to an eCos device. It 
should be a fairly standard task in network-enabled embedded devices. 
All users would like to hook their stuff to a network and access the UI 
by typing "mydevice" into a browser.

To accomplish this, two things are needed:
- automatic assignment of link-local IP addresses and
- decentralized name resolution.

Both problems were solved a long time ago.

RFC3927 "Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses" describes 
how to auto-allocate an IP from the 169.254/16 range. MacOS 8 and 
Windows 98 did that 10 years ago.

The ancient NetBIOS protocol specifies how a host auto-assigns a name 
and resolves name queries into it's own IP. Newer solutions have emerged 
these days (zeroconf's mDNS) but it is not implemented in older systems 
(such as WinXP).

This stuff is old and common, but I can't seem to find implementations 
for eCos. Do you know of any?

--
Kind regards,
Tarmo Kuuse


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[ECOS] Re: "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[Tarmo Kuuse]

Tarmo Kuuse wrote:
> I wish to add basic "plug-and-play" networking to an eCos device. It 
> should be a fairly standard task in network-enabled embedded devices. 
> All users would like to hook their stuff to a network and access the UI 
> by typing "mydevice" into a browser.

No replies. Apparently plug-and-play is not hip with eCos developers :)

> The ancient NetBIOS protocol specifies how a host auto-assigns a name 
> and resolves name queries into it's own IP. Newer solutions have emerged 
> these days (zeroconf's mDNS) but it is not implemented in older systems 
> (such as WinXP).

FYI: there exists an embeddable SMB server called AzSmb (GPL):
http://members.inode.at/anton.zechner/az/AzSmb.en.htm

First impression: lean but functional (does name resolution, 
authentication and file sharing). Code is nicely structured, readable 
and commented. A bit of general & API documentation exists.

Currently supported OS is On-Time RTOS-32 (and Linux, and Windows). 
However, code is simple C++ (no exceptions or STL) and calls to 
underlying system are all wrapped. It needs only threads, TCP/IP stack, 
malloc, file system. Porting to eCos might not be difficult.

Maybe this helps people save some effort in future. I'll just try to 
hack together a minimal NMB name broadcast, because that's all I need 
(and I don't know enough about eCos to do any serious porting).

--
Kind regards,
Tarmo Kuuse


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[ECOS] Re: "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-04-22, Tarmo Kuuse <tarmo.kuuse@mail.ee> wrote:
> Tarmo Kuuse wrote:
>> I wish to add basic "plug-and-play" networking to an eCos device. It 
>> should be a fairly standard task in network-enabled embedded devices. 
>> All users would like to hook their stuff to a network and access the UI 
>> by typing "mydevice" into a browser.
>
> No replies. Apparently plug-and-play is not hip with eCos
> developers :)

No, I just have no idea what "plug-and-play networking" means
in this context.

To me, "plug-and-play" refers to a mostly-broken scheme to
auto-detect ISA cards in old-school PCs and configure their IO
addresses and IRQ usage automagically.  IIRC, it didn't work.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! But was he mature
                                  at               enough last night at the
                               visi.com            lesbian masquerade?


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Re: [ECOS] Re: "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[Chris Holgate]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2009-04-22, Tarmo Kuuse <tarmo.kuuse@mail.ee> wrote:
>> Tarmo Kuuse wrote:
>>> I wish to add basic "plug-and-play" networking to an eCos device. It 
>>> should be a fairly standard task in network-enabled embedded devices. 
>>> All users would like to hook their stuff to a network and access the UI 
>>> by typing "mydevice" into a browser.
>> No replies. Apparently plug-and-play is not hip with eCos
>> developers :)
> 
> No, I just have no idea what "plug-and-play networking" means
> in this context.
> 
> To me, "plug-and-play" refers to a mostly-broken scheme to
> auto-detect ISA cards in old-school PCs and configure their IO
> addresses and IRQ usage automagically.  IIRC, it didn't work.

The PnP TLA has subsequently been overloaded and extended to give UPnP,
which is what I think the original question was about.  See:

http://www.upnp.org/

I agree with the OP that it would be a useful addition to eCos to
include support for device-side UPnP, since this is now a pretty
standard feature on networked consumer gadgets.

Chris.

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[ECOS] Re: "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-04-22, Chris Holgate <chris@zynaptic.com> wrote:

>>> No replies. Apparently plug-and-play is not hip with eCos
>>> developers :)
>> 
>> No, I just have no idea what "plug-and-play networking" means
>> in this context.
>> 
>> To me, "plug-and-play" refers to a mostly-broken scheme to
>> auto-detect ISA cards in old-school PCs and configure their IO
>> addresses and IRQ usage automagically.  IIRC, it didn't work.
>
> The PnP TLA has subsequently been overloaded and extended to give UPnP,
> which is what I think the original question was about.  See:
>
> http://www.upnp.org/

Ah.  I see it uses XML.  That way you know it's got to be good.


Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I request a weekend in
                                  at               Havana with Phil Silvers!
                               visi.com            


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[ECOS] Re: "Plug-and-play" networking in eCos

[Tarmo Kuuse]

Chris Holgate wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2009-04-22, Tarmo Kuuse <tarmo.kuuse@mail.ee> wrote:
>>> Tarmo Kuuse wrote:
>>>> I wish to add basic "plug-and-play" networking to an eCos device. It 
>>>> should be a fairly standard task in network-enabled embedded devices. 
>>>> All users would like to hook their stuff to a network and access the UI 
>>>> by typing "mydevice" into a browser.
>>> No replies. Apparently plug-and-play is not hip with eCos
>>> developers :)
>> No, I just have no idea what "plug-and-play networking" means
>> in this context.
>>
>> To me, "plug-and-play" refers to a mostly-broken scheme to
>> auto-detect ISA cards in old-school PCs and configure their IO
>> addresses and IRQ usage automagically.  IIRC, it didn't work.
> 
> The PnP TLA has subsequently been overloaded and extended to give UPnP,
> which is what I think the original question was about.  See:
> 
> http://www.upnp.org/
> 
> I agree with the OP that it would be a useful addition to eCos to
> include support for device-side UPnP, since this is now a pretty
> standard feature on networked consumer gadgets.

Sorry for the confusion. I was talking about the concept, not any 
specific technology with a trademark name.

Gadgets with Ethernet should just work. If a network is without 
infrastructure (no DHCP, no DNS, no nothing), user should not configure 
anything to make it work. It's the only solution for non-IT people.

User takes eCos device out of box, turns it on. User connects his laptop 
with the device (or a network of those devices). User starts Firefox, 
types the address "http://mygadget" and the web interface comes up.

This requires solving two simple problems:

1. Devices self-assign IP addresses (see [RFC3927])
2. Devices provide limited name resolution (see SMB [RFC1001], mDNS or 
LLMNR [RFC4795])

I was just probing if anybody had done this before.

The UPnP is for much more difficult problems.

--
Kind regards,
Tarmo Kuuse


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