Release Notes PN 93000515_G Digi Connect SP 82000908_G EOS April 26, 2006 INTRODUCTION This is a production release of firmware for the Digi Connect SP. The Digi Connect SP device server is the ideal solution for web and network-enabled applications by delivering a powerful, compact and customizable device networking solution for both "plug-and-play" and custom application environments. SUPPORTED PRODUCTS Digi Connect SP Digi Connect SP 2-port MEI Digi Connect SP 2-port RS232 ENHANCEMENTS Added support for the Digi Connect SP 2-port products. Configurable RealPort keepalive. Increased network stack configurability. Various command line improvements, see UI CHANGES later in this document. BUG FIXES It is now possible to upgrade the firmware with files that contain a '$' in their filename. KNOWN ISSUES It is not currently possible to configure the escape characters used by client applications (connect, telnet, and rlogin). If the standard web service (HTTP) is disabled, the encrypted web service (HTTPS) stops operating. They will be made independently selectable in a future release. When attempting to upgrade the firmware on a unit which has password authentication enabled, this release requires one to disable passwords during the time period of the firmware upgrade. When attempting to replace files in the file system, simply overwrite the existing version of the file rather than deleting the file first. Attempting to delete the file first defeats the internal file versioning maintained by the firmware, and can confuse your browser's cache. For the most consistent experience with the user interface, it is suggested that you clear your Internet cache. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) has a known problem where it displays the error message "Internet Explorer Cannot Open" when you use an HTTPS URL to access this Digi product. The following Microsoft article explains the problem: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=812935 UI CHANGES Telnet The "send" command has been added which allows the user to send telnet special character sequences when connected using the telnet client. syntax: send [option] options: ao {Send telnet abort output} ayt {Send telnet 'Are You There'} brk {Send telnet break} ec {Send telnet erase character} el {Send telnet erase line} escape {Send current escape character} ga {Send telnet 'Go Ahead' sequence} ip {Send telnet interrupt process} nop {Send telnet 'No operation'} synch {Perform telnet 'Synch operation'} ----- RLogin The "rlogin" command has been added to allow rlogin connections to remote hosts. ----- Network Options The "set net" command has changed in several ways. The "garbage_byte" and "override_dhcp" TCP keepalive options have been removed. The following options have been added: dns1: dns2: Allows the user to specify the IP address of up to two Domain Name Servers for name lookup. rto_min: Allows the user to specify a lower threshold for the TCP retransmission sliding window calculation. Choosing an value lower than the default of 1000 ms may assist in achieving improved latency performance when retransmissions occur. rto_max: Allows the user to specify the maximum retransmit before the TCP connection is terminated. arp_ttl: Allows the user to specify the amount of time that an ARP entry remains in the network ARP cache. garp: Allows the user to specify how often the unit will announce its MAC address on the network using a "Gratuitous ARP" message. ----- Display command There are a few new network related "display" commands. display sockets: Displays information on how socket resources are being used by the system. display tcp: display udp: Displays information about pending and current connections for TCP or UDP respectively.. display netdevice: Displays the network devices present in the system. ----- Delayed ACK A new option has been added to the "set service" command called "delayed_ack". This allows the user to configure how long the TCP stack will wait for data on which to place the ACK flag before sending a packet with no payload and the ACK flag set. ----- RealPort Keepalive The RealPort protocol has an optional mechanism that uses an internal "keepalive" packet to cause periodic guaranteed traffic on a link. This packet however may cause issues in environments that are metered for traffic or do not require this type of mechanism. The "set realport" command can be used to turn off this behavior with "set realport keepalive=off". DOCUMENTATION ERRATA Password authentication can be enabled in this release, but authentication is OFF BY DEFAULT. A security screen has been added to the user interface to allow one to enable username and password authentication. When password checking is enabled, the user will be challenged when accessing the initial screen of the UI, and if the user uses a Digi Device Discovery tool. RESETTING THE UNIT One feature of the Digi Connect SP firmware is an ability for a user to both soft reset the unit as well as reset the unit to its factory defaults. Both functions may be invoked via the "reset" button on the bottom of the module. * If the module is running (i.e. more than a few seconds after power on), holding the button for a second and then releasing it will soft reset the unit. * If the button is pressed for more than 10 seconds from the power on of the unit, it will prepare to reset the unit to its factory default state. Once the unit is prepared to reset, it will blink "1-5-1" on the red LED. Releasing the button will then reset the configuration. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION The configuration save and restore tools will save every configurable parameter (including IP configuration) except for those related to password authentication. HISTORY 82000908F5 ENHANCEMENTS Added support for the RS232-only Connect SP. Control flashing of 1-1-1 to allow faster boot up. Added a new feature to set the initial level of GPIO output states to a user configurable setting. (Vantive 16384) Added new feature to allow upload of customization files using Connect Programmer. Add support for a user-configurable DHCP host name (DHCP Option 12) to the Digi Connect family of products. (Vantive 14648) With the latest combination of POST firmware and embedded operating system, the Digi Connect device servers now offer the ability to select whether some of their power-on self tests will be executed or skipped. The new default behavior of the POST will be to skip some of its tests, including the test of the diagnostic LED which blinks 1 - 1 - 1 before running the EOS. Skipping the tests enables the device to boot more quickly. With a CLI command in the EOS, customers will be able to choose to execute the tests, restoring the previous POST behavior. The new CLI commands are: boot postaction=display boot postaction=skip boot postaction=execute BUG FIXES Corrected regression where file upload using the Connect Programmer was not showing up in the web UI. (Vantive 15771) Added logic to re-establish a TCP socket connection after a remote host becomes drops off line. (Vantive 16396) 82000908E New SNMP MIBs were added including: RS-232, character, and device info MIBs. SNMP traps were added that allow the generation of SNMP traps when logins, authentication failures, network linkage, and cold startup events occur. In addition SNMP traps are supported with the alarm feature. The alarm feature allows emails and/or SNMP traps to be generated when there is a GPIO signal change or a particuliar data pattern is seen from incoming serial data. The Portbuffering feature was added that allows buffering of incoming ASCII data from the serial port. A memory leak was fixed that occured in rare situations during network data transfer. 82000908D Connection and session management has been added to the CLI. The commands related to the manipulation of connections and/or sessions includes: who -- list connections kill -- attempt to kill a connection status -- list all sessions associated with a specified connection close -- attempt to close a session associated with a specific connection reconnect -- if we have "escaped" from a client session back to the CLI, this allows us to return control to the session connect -- from the CLI, send data to/from a serial port, escape character is ^[ telnet -- from the CLI, initiate a telnet session with a remote device, escape character is ^] rlogin -- from the CLI, initiate an rlogin session with a remote device, escape character is ~ The ability to list connections and to attempt to kill connections has been added to web interface. The ability to connect the CLI via rlogin has been added. The ability to initiate an automatic connection between a serial port and a remote network device via rlogin has been added. The ability to enable full duplex ethernet as well as auto duplex negotiation has been added. The ability to influence the way that the unit forwards data from the serial port to the network has been added. This serial over TCP forwarding allows one to insert buffering between the serial port and the network socket for a connection. This buffering allows one to "hold off" on pushing received serial data into the queue for network transmission until certain criteria are met, including the amount of data received, gaps of idle time of a certain length, and/or specific data patterns. This new buffering capability is off by default. The ADDP discovery / IP assignment service may now be completely disabled. A low-level serial configuration interface has been added. When enabled, it allows one to use the DSR modem signal to shift serial port 1 into a special mode where received data is interpreted as a set of RCI commands. Since enabling the feature causes the standard interpretation of the DSR signal to be lost, it is disabled by default. 82000908C Under certain conditions, received serial data would unexpectedly get duplication of 0xFF characters in the data stream. This now only happens when character marking is explicitly requested. The units were not properly detecting RealPort server disconnects, so were not gracefully recovering from network outages for RealPort connections. 82000908A Initial Release.