On Mon, 2005-04-25 at 00:50 +0300, Peter Dimov wrote:

Don G wrote:

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This doesn't make any of these streams networks, and neither is a communication port a network.

I won't debate semantics here (too much<g>): Once the line is up, communications between A and B occur in exactly the same way as they would with TCP/IP. Both ends "listen" for incoming stream connections on multiple ports (each for a different "service"), each can accept one or more datagrams on different ports, again for different services. In a nutshell, they are abstractly identical. The big difference is that the entire network consists of two hosts.

Yes, I see. I was thinking of a different scenario, however, one in which you communicate with a device over a serial line (not with another host) using a specified protocol. Since serial lines are relatively slow, asynchronous communication is a good thing.

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This of course leads to the obvious question: which network gives me a stream over COM1?

network_ptr com1 = new net_over_stream( new stream_over_serial("com1"));

Wait a minute. Which network creates the stream_over_serial? Assume that I don't need the outer network since I'll be communicating with a printer, for example.

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LPT1?

network_ptr lpt1 = new net_over_stream( new stream_over_lpt("lpt1"));

This is wrong IMHO. These are devices. If you want to implement a network over them then it should be done with device drivers. E.g you could implement PPP over COMn and then access it via socket or net:: lib via TCP or UDP. /ikh