Coldfire tcp/ip stack

[paul1962]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if the nichelite tcp/ip stack is till supported in any way ?

I'm looking to incorporate network support on our product and have downloaded the nichelite code from Freescale.  However, I notice there are comments in the examples about bugs in the stack and wondered if there were any updates on this ?

The most recent code I can find is about a year old, is there anything newer ?

From reading the license and other threads on here it appears we can't distribute modified source code.  As this makes supporting each other difficult, if not impossible, are there other open source stacks which people are succesfully using on Coldfire ?

Thanks

Paul

[bkatt]

What they provide is a combination of NicheLite and NicheTask from InterNiche, plus Freescale code including library stuff, drivers and example apps. Freescale updated it at least once in the last 2 years, and I think they are planning another update soon.

Despite "comments in the examples about bugs in the stack", we've had to fix and replace pieces of source code from Freescale, while the changes we made to our copy of the Niche stuff were mainly to reduce memory use (hint: const). InterNiche would prefer that you don't change their code at all, because they have a more capable IP stack they are happy to sell you as a drop-in replacement.

Yes, the license makes it more difficult for users to help each other, but we've managed to do it to some extent without posting source.

If I had to do it over, I would look more seriously at the uTasker stuff. There's a fee for commercial use, but the architecture seems better suited to the limited RAM in the Freescale chips, and there is a better community.

[paul1962]

Thanks for your reply.

I've converted the web server example to run on our platform - MCF5208 and our own o/s.

Seemed to go fairly smoothly.

Obviously it's not had much of a test yet so that'll be the next job when time allows.

The 10ms delay between packets is horrible so I'd like to figure out why that's there and why it's needed so it can be fixed.

I can't get any firm info on an update to the stack other than "should be soon".

I did look at uTasker but we've our own o/s which we're happy with so I don't want to change at the moment.  I may investigate it for a private project though.

Paul

[bkatt]

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paul1962 wrote:

...I've converted the web server example to run on our platform...

...The 10ms delay between packets is horrible so I'd like to figure out why that's there and why it's needed so it can be fixed.

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I eventually gave up on their webserver example and wrote my own. I think the 10 ms delay was a crude attempt to avoid using up all the tcp buffers. The niche lite stack was developed with dozens of message buffers; Freescale reduced it to something like 4 because their 5223x chips have limited RAM. You have to keep a buffer open for receive to avoid a deadlock, and a big transmit stream needs some kind of throttle.