TALtech is Pleased to announce the newest version of TCP-Com v4.1®. The latest release of TCP-Com now has support for the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in addition to TCP/IP.
TCP-Com from TAL Technologies is a Windows-based software utility that is designed as a RS232 to TCP/IP converter. TCP-Com performs two jobs:
TCP-Com therefore allows you to send and receive RS232 (serial) data across any TCP/IP network including the Internet.
The latest release of TCP-Com (version 4.1) now has support for the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in addition to TCP/IP. The UDP protocol is similar to the TCP/IP protocol except that the TCP/IP protocol is a "connection" protocol whereas UDP is a "connectionless" protocol. With TCP/IP, a client application establishes a connection to a TCP/IP Server and data is exchanged until the connection is closed by either the client or the server. You can think of it as similar to a telephone connection where the client dials the connection to the server and they carry on a conversation until either party hangs up the phone. With UDP, both the client and the server open the same "port" and when one sends data, it is received by the other however there is no actual "connection" between the client and the server.
In contrast to TCP/IP, the UDP protocol works in a manner that is analogous to two walkie-talkies that are tuned to the same channel. With TCP/IP, if a CLIENT tries to establish a connection to a SERVER that is not available, then the client receives an error indicating that no connection is available. With UDP if there is no server, the Client does not receive an error. Also, with TCP/IP communications, if either end sends data to the other end and the data does not get through, the sending application receives an error indicating that the data transmission failed. With UDP communications, no error checking is performed therefore data is not 100% guaranteed to get through. However, UDP communication is generally much faster than TCP/IP. UDP also recovers more easily if there are failures in a network connection that are subsequently repaired.
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