Networking and Communications

In order to communicate with other embedded devices or host systems whether on a local network or in the cloud a secure networking stack is essential. This can become more difficult to implement on resource constrained devices, such as microcontrollers, where on-device flash storage and RAM are limited and has to be shared with the remainder of the application code.

lwIP – lightweight TCP/IP

For most applications where an operating system or RTOS doesn’t provide it’s own TCP/IP stack SDC Systems recommend the use of the lwIP TCP/IP stack. This is an independent, open source protocol suite supporting Ethernet and serial interfaces with a permissive BSD style license.

The focus of the lwIP TCP/IP implementation is to reduce resource usage while still having a full scale TCP. This makes lwIP suitable for use in embedded systems with tens of kilobytes of free RAM and room for around 40 kilobytes of code ROM.

The main features include:

• Protocols: IP, IPv6, ICMP, ND, MLD, UDP, TCP, IGMP, ARP, PPPoS, PPPoE
• DHCP client, DNS client (incl. mDNS hostname resolver), AutoIP/APIPA (Zeroconf), SNMP agent (v1, v2c, v3, private MIB support & MIB compiler)
• APIs: specialized APIs for enhanced performance, optional Berkeley-alike socket API
• Extended features: IP forwarding over multiple network interfaces, TCP congestion control, RTT estimation and fast recovery/fast retransmit
• Addon applications: HTTP(S) server, SNTP client, SMTP(S) client, ping, NetBIOS nameserver, mDNS responder, MQTT client, TFTP server

Since its release, lwIP has spurred a lot of interest and is today being used in many commercial products. lwIP has been ported to multiple platforms and operating systems and can be run either with or without an underlying OS.

Real Time Logic Networking Solutions

For higher level networking protocols SDC Systems has partnered with Real Time Logic, a world class IoT security and web-enablement specialist. Their solutions drive modern real-time embedded applications to ensure the smooth deployment and safe operation of next generation products.

Barracuda Application Server

The Barracuda Application Server (BAS) provides a hardware agnostic fully integrated and optimized solution for rapid IoT / M2M development of embedded web applications, allowing the device to achieve graphically rich, dynamic content, with a smart connected interface.

The Barracuda Application Server provides a high level development environment that enables full-stack developers to design web based user interfaces for devices. This is possible thanks to the scripting language integrated in the Barracuda App Server.

A full-stack developer can design web interfaces for devices — something that they would normally not be able to do since they are not C programmers. Your embedded engineers can now focus on your device and only need to provide a device API for the full-stack developer(s). More details…

SharkSSL

SharkSSL is the smallest, fastest, and best performing embedded TLS v1.0/1.1/1.2 solution. With its array of compile-time options, the small and fast SharkSSL can be fine-tuned to a light footprint that occupies less than 20kB, while maintaining full x.509 authentication, using industry standard encryption.

SharkSSL is delivered as optimised C and assembly language source code which can be compiled to run with a high-level operating system, RTOS or on bare metal and supports hardware encryption, elliptic curves and suite B. More details…

PikeHTTP(s) Client Library

The PikeHTTP(S) client enables embedded devices to communicate with any web server and to upload and download any type of data. Devices can independently retrieve files such as configuration files and software updates, enabling large arrays of devices to be updated simultaneously without direct, one-by-one reconfiguration.

The PikeHTTP(s) client library is available as part of the Barracuda Application Server or as a standalone library with or without the SharkSSL embedded SSL/TLS capabilities. More details…

Find out more…

For more information on network protocols or engineering services, to help with integration, available from SDC Systems please complete the form below.