Internet Protocols for Network-Attached Peripherals
Steve Hotz, Rodney Van Meter, Gregory G. Finn · 2003
This paper presents our thesis that the advantages of the internet protocol framework make it the best choice for communications protocols to, and between, networkattached peripherals (NAPs). Moreover, the IP suite is more appropriate than the specialized protocol stacks being developed for commercial NAPs. The benefits of using IP include support for heterogeneous network media, wide-area connectivity, and reduced research and development effort. We examine the issues for use of the internet protocols (TCP/UDP/IP) for NAPs, address commonly held concerns regarding its performance, and describe the Netstation project's prototype implementations of IP peripherals. 1 Introduction Netstation is a research system architecture based on a switched gigabit network as a system backplane [10]; all of the major subsystems are network attached peripherals (NAPs). A network-attached display has been prototyped, and a software-emulated network-attached disk has been implemented. A camera NAP is al...