QIP is a full duplex serial communications multiplexer. QIP implements 32 bidirectional channels between two QIP connected computers.
QIP requires a serial port address and an interrupt. The interrupt cannot be shared with any other program. Supported Interrupts are 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, and 15. QIP and its related drivers will support the higher baud rates 56K and 112K as well as FIFO buffering provided 16550 UARTS are used.
A wide area network (WAN) can be implemented by connecting two QNX 2 networks with a QIP link, and/or by connecting a number of computers with QIP links.
NPCS users can start remote operator stations anywhere on the QIP WAN and get full access to process screens, alarm pages, trends, menus etc. with surprisingly good response time.
A library of functions including qip_name_locate() is provided to use the standard send() and receive() function calls. Thus, user programs can communicate by message passing across a QIP WAN.
The program QIPLOGIN is used to login into any computer on the QIP WAN. The program QIPMOUNT is used to mount as a remote disk any drive of any computer on the QIP WAN. The program QIPPING is used to test channel communications and evaluate the effective baud rate.
QIP updates internal communication error counters. A utility program called QIPSTS can be used to read and reset those counters.
QIP allocates its 32 channels on a first come, first served basis thus providing much flexibility on allocation and usage of the channels. Any channel can be used for any purpose.
For those interested in the future of QIP and NPCS: QIP is almost a plugin for ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) technology!
[Serial Communication Drivers]
[QIP QNX Interprocess Protocol]
[QNX ETHERNET Driver]
[Linux]