[hpsdr] Call for Comments and Discussion - OzyII : To TCP/IP or not to TCP/IP

[J.D. Bakker]

At 12:09 +0200 21-07-2009, Henry Vredegoor wrote:
>Although I vote for the full TCP/IP solution, some may question if we
>want/need a full functional TCP/IP or if we could do with less.
>I think the USRP2 may be going that route by adding just UDP?

I'd say UDP is the way to go. Not only is UDP almost trivial to 
implement into an FPGA once you have raw Ethernet TX/RX working, its 
functionality is easily sufficient for modern HDR systems. Datagram 
loss is not an issue when streaming over a (dedicated) local net, and 
a host that can't keep up with an UDP flow will certainly choke on 
the same flow over TCP.

UDP even offers a feature that TCP can't. An OZY-II can (should, 
IMHO) send its data by multicast UDP, allowing the same stream to be 
received by several computers on the same subnet. I believe that 
there are many ham-relevant scenarios (contests and the like) where 
it's very useful to have multiple people receiving the same wideband 
stream from an antenna, especially combined with SDR software that 
allows everyone to look at their own band segment.

JDB.
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