(Hope this is the correct newsgroup)
I write software for microcontroller-driven electronic boards, and I'm evaluating a way to interface such boards with an ethernet network.
I use very limited microcontrollers (32kbyte rom, 1,5kbyte ram), and it's quite difficult to implement a complete tcp/ip stack and have also space for my application. So I'm thinking to use ethernet packets with a user-defined protocol.
I'm doing some test with PCs; I'm using an ethernet packet generator (packeth, packeth.sourceforge.net ) and a sniffer (wireshark); I put in the ethernet header a random value (this value is 0800 for ip; 0806 for arp; I put 8959, wireshark tells it's an unknown one).
The test packet is correctly sent by packeth and correctly received by wireshark, and the other PCs on the network didn't complain about it, even if the ethernet destination address was 'ffffffffffff', broadcast.
My question is: can I use with no problems my protocol? There are things I should know? Some limitation I will run into? I have to use a particular ethernet packet type?
Thanks in advance and sorry for my english.
Best regards, BQ