> It's easy in theory - until you see our comms cabinet! There are 200+
> cat5 network cables coming out of a hole in the wall running into a
> stack of interconnected hubs/switches (NB: None of these are labeled as
> to where they have come from, of course. Oh no - That would be too
> easy!). So, we're either looking at a whole new re-cabling job for the
> building (no chance!), testing each and every cable with some sort of
> testing meter to find the right one, or sticking with RJ45 and TCP.
> Besides, what fun would RS485 be? ;)
>
> For those that are in IT - we've probably all see comms cabinets from
> hell, and this is no exception (so before a sub-topic gets going here -
> I'm chiming in with my war story!)

You can easily use the underlying Ethernet without dealing with the
complexities of TCP. You can use UDP, which is *much* simpler. Actually, you
don't have to use an IP protocol at all, but can use raw Ethernet frames if
you wish. I would, however, suggest UDP because it is much simpler than TCP,
only marginally more difficult than raw Ethernet, and is *much* easier to
interface to from a PC/*nix/Mac, etc. than raw Ethernet.

Bob Ammerman
RAm Systems

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