[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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