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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

Lwip

Hi guys.

In my system, l have 2 Nios processors.One of the is responsible for Ethernet communication.

I am not using MicroC/OS-II(too expansive for as).I am going to use FreeRTOS with lwIP(TCP/IP Stack). So i have ti handle:

1.FreeRTOS for NIOS(l think, it will not huge problem. www.freertos.org has a manual for porting).

2.I need to insert lwIP into FreeRTOS code, in order to port lwip to NIOS platform.

Question:

Anyone can halp me to get somewhere ready(ported) lwIP stack?

In altera folder l have not it.According the documents(pretty old) of Altera, company get out this(lwIP, which is ported yet) package from Quartus package.

3 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    15 years ago

    Hi,

    lwIP for Altera is old and not recommended for new design (on their opinions).

    I had made many "deep"(google cache, white papaers...) researches too. Sorry, I can't help you. I abandoned my researches and my project is suspended (objectif changed).

    You should consider InterNiche Stack which, in my opinion, "can" be ported to FreeRTOS.

    lwip :

    advantages : free, open source, ported to FreeRTOS....

    inconvenients : not stable, hard to implement (site is very confused), Even if there are documents, it is not easy to use. not many examples with MAC/phy.

    i suggest to look at billa's post. he posted a driver...... (thanks to billa).

    interniche stack :

    advantages : good support, used by Altera (with ucOS II), used by a few users in "superloop mode", support usual MAC/PHY. I think it can be ported to any OS (see sources)

    inconvenients : not free, hard to implement (i mean not obvious, heavy modifications, huge for 1 only designer). For me, too expensive for 100 products for just sending text by Ethernet.

    I stayed interested if someone have succeeded in using LwIP with FreeRTOS with NIOS II on Altera devices.

    Other suggestions : uCLinux (but need 8MB for kernel only), why not ?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    15 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    lwip :

    advantages : free, open source, ported to FreeRTOS....

    inconvenients : not stable, hard to implement (site is very confused), Even if there are documents, it is not easy to use. not many examples with MAC/phy.

    --- Quote End ---

    I totally disagree with your assessment of lwIP: It is very stable - we make and sell high-end (expensive) equipment running lwIP on Cyclone III (and PowerPC) where problems with lwIP would cost real time and money (e.g. ruining the customer's end product). lwIP has been perfect. The lwIP wiki has gotten much better and the lwIP socket and netconn APIs are well documented.

    We don't use an OS and lwIP's equivalent "superloop" mode is easy to use and is documented. There is a low-level (RAW API) which is much more efficient than sockets. And zero-copy Ethernet drivers can be written for lwIP.

    I agree that there are not many porting examples. But there are examples that show how lwIP receives packets and expects to send packets. The example missing for you is "How to use the Altera NIOS II TSE driver to send and receive Ethernet packets (without Interniche code)". If you can do this, you can use lwIP.

    Bill