November 2004, Issue 172

TCP/IP Stack Solution
A Detailed Look at the CMX-MicroNet

CMX-MicroNet

Like its name suggests, CMX-MicroNet is a TCP/IP stack designed for use with microcontrollers that contain small amounts of program and data memory. To be able to play in this memory-constrained domain, CMX-MicroNet provides the application coder with a variety of configuration options. CMX-MicroNet supports up to 127 UDP or TCP sockets. All of the sockets can be configured as Ethernet, SLIP, or PPP sockets. However, you can intermix Ethernet and SLIP sockets or Ethernet and PPP sockets, but you can’t build a combination of SLIP and PPP sockets.

The CMX-MicroNet configuration I have is designed to work exclusively with the HI-TECH PICC-18 C compiler. It includes an HTTP web server, an SMTP client, and a DHCP client. For those of you who need it and have equipment that supports it, the CMX-MicroNet TCP/IP implementation also supports an IGMP client. TCP, UDP, Ethernet, and ping are also integral parts of the CMX-MicroNet product.

I chucked all of my experimental dial-up accounts because I felt I was being ripped off. So, I won’t be able to show you any of the dial-up features offered by CMX-MicroNet. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the PPP and SLIP features work as advertised. So instead I’ve put together a combination of an EDTP Electronics Easy Ethernet W/PIC18 and Packet Whacker, a microEngineering Labs PIC Proto 80, a brand new copy of HI-TECH C for the PIC18 microcontrollers, and a hockey puck (MPLAB ICD 2). The point is to show you how I learned about the way CMX-MicroNet behaves.