1.1.2 Key Features

The key features of the MPLAB® Harmony TCP/IP Stack are:

  • Multiple interfaces - Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi interfaces are supported.
  • Dual stack with IPv4 and/or IPv6 support:
  • UDP and TCP sockets can support either/or IPv4/IPv6 connections.
  • Fully dynamic:
    • Stack initialization/deinitialization
    • Up/down interface
    • Resource management
    • Module configuration
  • Improved modularity and stack layout:
    • The stack uses the drivers and services provided by the MPLAB Harmony framework (for example, the SPI driver for the Wi-Fi interface). This improvement offers better isolation, modularity, and maintainability of the stack.
  • Run-time configuration through the TCP/IP console:
    • The stack uses the System Console and Debug system services.
  • Interrupt driven operation.
  • RTOS friendly, with easy RTOS integration:
    • OSAL calls are added in all stack modules for multi-threading support.
  • The BSD layer compatibility has been greatly improved; new dynamic socket options have been added as well as IPv6 support.
  • Run time benchmarking support using standard industry tools - Iperf
  • The MPLAB Harmony file system (SYS FS) is used by the HTTP, FTP, SNMP, modules, among others. This makes the stack independent of the specific file structure of a particular media and allows web page storage on a multitude of storage media.
  • The stack uses the high performance MPLAB Harmony Cryptographic Library, which is a very efficient and modern implementation supporting the latest encryption and key exchanges algorithms.
  • The stack security has been greatly improved by adding support of the modern wolfSSL TLS libraries.

MPLAB® Harmony TCP/IP Stack Architecture

The MPLAB Harmony TCP/IP Stack is designed as a part of a system running other applications, middlewares and drivers. Therefore, it makes use of the system services that are available to other modules in the system or to the application, such as:

  • File system
  • System interrupts
  • System timers
  • System device drivers
  • System command processor
  • System console
  • System debug services

MPLAB Harmony TCP/IP Stack Utilities

The MPLAB Harmony TCP/IP Stack includes the following utilities:

  • MPFS2 - The MPFS2 Java utility that assists the application in generating the MPFS image of the files needed by the Web server has been updated.
  • TCP/IP Discoverer - The TCP/IP Discoverer Java utility is useful in discovering the Microchip devices running the TCP/IP stack present in a network segment. The utility has been updated to support IPV6 too.