Small Internet Protocol Stack using a standard serial port.

Dependencies:   mbed

PPP-Blinky - TCP/IP Networking Over a Serial Port

Note: The source code is at the bottom of this page.

/media/uploads/nixnax/blinky-connected.gif
A Windows desktop showing PPP-Blinky in the network connections list.

Describe PPP-Blinky in Three Sentences

PPP-Blinky is a tiny library that enables Internet protocols (IPv4) to any mbed target hardware by using only a serial port.

The code runs on processors with as little as 8k RAM, for example the Nucleo-L053R8 board.

PPP-Blinky uses the industry-standard PPP (Point-to-Point) Protocol and a tiny "stateless" TCP/IP stack.

No Ethernet Port Required

No ethernet port is required - PPP-Blinky uses a serial port to send IP packets to your PC.

PPP-Blinky emulates a standard dial-up modem and therefore connects to Windows, Linux or Adroid machines.

The code runs on most ARM mbed platforms such as the LPC11U24 shown in the picture below:

/media/uploads/nixnax/blinky-to-laptop1.jpg mbed LPC11u24 acting as a webserver to a Windows laptop.

Webserver

The Webserver and WebSocket functions are ideal for building browser-based GUIs on mbed-enabled hardware.

PPP-Blinky's HTTP webserver works with most web clients such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Curl, wget and Lynx as well as Microsoft Powershell Invoke-Webrequest command.

In the image below Firefox web browser displays the main web page embedded into PPP-Blinky's code:

/media/uploads/nixnax/ppp-blinky-firefox.jpg Firefox web browser displays a web page embedded into PPP-Blinky's code

WebSocket Service

WebSocket is the most popular protocol standard for real-time bidirectional TCP/IP communication between clients and servers.
In the image below a small Internet Explorer script has connected to PPP-Blinky's WebSocket Service.
A websocket message was then sent by the browser and was echoed back by the WebSocket, triggering the onmessage event in the script.
The WebSocket service enables bidirectional real-time interaction between PPP-Blinky and any element in the browser DOM via JavaScript.
If you already have PPP-Blinky up and running you can test your WebSocket service using this: http://jsfiddle.net/d26cyuh2/112/embedded/result
Websockets are ideal for building browser-based GUIs for mbed hardware.

/media/uploads/nixnax/ppp-blinky-websocke-2.gif

Trying PPP-Blinky on your mbed board

You will need an mbed-enabled hardware board: https://developer.mbed.org/platforms/

Establish a serial port connection between your host PC and your mbed board. The easiest way is to use mbed hardware with a USB serial debug port. I've tried the ST-Micro Nucleo-L476RG, Nucleo-L152RE, Nucleo-F401RE, Nucleo-L432KC, Nucleo-L053R8, mbed-LPC11U24 and mbed-LPC1768 boards and they all work out of the box. Use the mbed online compiler to compile the software for your target board. Save the compiled binary to your hardware.

Before establishing a network connection, you can verify the operation of the code by opening a terminal program such as Tera Term, and setting the baud rate of the COM port on your mbed board to 115200 baud. LED1 should toggle for every two 0x7E (~) (i.e. tilde) characters you type, as 0x7E is the PPP frame start/end marker. Don't forget to close the port when your'e done testing, or else Windows Dial-up Networking will report that the COM port is in use by another program when you try to connect.

Once you are certain that the serial port and firmware is working, proceed to creating a new network connection on your PC -see below.

Creating a Dial-up Connection in Windows

/media/uploads/nixnax/modem.jpg

Setting up Dial-Up Networking (DUN) on your Windows 7 or 8 PC is essentially a two-step process: First, you create a new modem device, because PPP-blinky partially emulates a standard Windows serial port modem device. Second, you create a new Internet connection (in practice, a new network adapter) which is associated with your new "modem".

Step-by-step description of how to configure Windows for PPP-Blinky here:

/users/nixnax/code/PPP-Blinky/wiki/Configuring-Windows-Dial-Up-Networking

There is also a screen on how to set up Linux dial-up networking near the bottom of this page.

Connecting to PPP-Blinky from your PC

Once Windows networking is configured you can establish a dial-up connection to your mbed board over the USB virtual com port.

The IP address you manually assigned to the new dial-up network adapter (172.10.10.1) functions as a gateway to any valid IP address on that subnet. In the screen capture below, I'm sending pings from the Windows 8 command line to my ST-Micro Nucleo-L476RG board over the USB virtual serial Port. I'm also using a second serial port and Tera Term to capture the debug output from a second serial port on the hardware. The optional debug output from the board prints out the IP source and destination address and the first few bytes of the data payload. Note that the source is the adapter IP address, (172.10.10.1 in this case) and the destination is some other address on that subnet - all packets to the subnet are sent to our mbed hardware. For example, you could also ping 172.10.10.123 or, if your PPP-Blinky is running, simply click on this link: http://172.10.10.123

/media/uploads/nixnax/ping-cap-3.gif

One Million Pings!

In the image below the ICMP ("ping") echo reply service was tested by sending one million pings to ppp-Blinky. This took over two hours.
The ping tool used on the Windows 8 PC was psping.exe from PsTools by Mark Russinovich - http://bit.ly/PingFast
The average reply time for a short ping (1 byte of payload data) was 11 milliseconds at 115200 baud on the $10 Nucleo-L053R8 board - barely enough time for 130 bytes to be sent over the port!

/media/uploads/nixnax/ppp-blinky-ping-results.jpg

Monitoring PPP-Blinky Packets

The image below is from a Microsoft Network Monitor 3.4 capture session.

Responses from PPP-Blinky are shown in blue.

Frame 2 - Internet Explorer at IP 172.10.10.1 (the Dial-Up Adapter IP) requests a TCP connection by sending an S (SYN) flag.
Frame 3 - PPP-Blinky at IP 172.10.10.2 responds with an ACK in frame 3. One direction of the link is now established.
Frame 4 - The PC acknowledges the SYN sent by PPP-Blinky in frame 3. The TCP link is now fully established.
Frame 5 - The browser "pushes" (P flag is set) an HTTP GET request to PPP-Blinky.
Frame 6 - PPP-Blinky responds with a standard HTTP response "pushes" (P flag set) back a small web page. It also sets the A (ACK) flag to acknowledge the message sent in frame 6.
Frame 7 - The PC acknowledges reception of the HTTP payload.
Frame 8 - The PC starts to shut down the TCP connection by sending a FIN flag.
Frame 9 - PPP-Blinky acknowledges the FIN request - the connection is now closed in one direction. It also sets a FIN flag in the response to request closure of the opposite direction of the connection.
Frame 10 - The PC acknowledges the FIN request. The closing of the TCP connection is now confirmed in both directions.

/media/uploads/nixnax/ms-network-monitor-http-get-1.gif

Debug Output

PPP-Blinky can output handy debug information to an optional second serial port.
The image below shows the debug output (Ident, Source, Destination, TCP Flags) for a complete HTTP conversation.
The PC messages are displayed in black. PPP-Blinky messages are blue.
Notice how PPP-blinky automatically inserts a blank line after each full HTTP conversation.

/media/uploads/nixnax/tcp-data-3.gif

Creating a Dial-Up Connection in Linux

The screen below shows the required pppd command to connect to PPP-Blinky from a Linux machine. This was much simpler than Windows! The USB serial port of the mbed LPC1768 board registered as /dev/ttyACM0 on my Linux box. Do a websearch on pppd if you want to learn more about pppd, the Linux PPP handler. Near the bottom of the screen below, two webpages are fetched (/ and /y) by using the curl command on the command line. Gnome Webkit and Firefox work fine, too. Also try echo GET / HTTP/1.1 | nc 172.10.10.2 which uses netcat, the "Swiss army knife" of networking tools. PPP-Blinky was also tested with ApacheBench, the Apache server benchmark software. After 100000 fetches, the mean page fetch rate was reported as 6 page fetches per second for a small page.

/media/uploads/nixnax/pppd-screen.png

Caveats

PPP Blinky is an extremely sparse implementation (1.5k lines) of HTTP,WebSocket,TCP, UDP, ICMP, IPCP and LCP over PPP, requiring around 8kB of RAM. The minimum functionality required to establish connectivity is implemented. These are often acceptable tradeoffs for embedded projects as well as a handy tool to learn the practical details of everyday networking implementations.

Revision:
114:8a5d70bbc1b2
Parent:
113:d9666fe4d0ed
Child:
115:b8ddff0e782f
--- a/main.cpp	Sat Aug 05 08:45:32 2017 +0000
+++ b/main.cpp	Sun Aug 06 10:29:41 2017 +0000
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 
 // Notes and Instructions
 // http://bit.ly/PPP-Blinky-Instructions
-// http://bit.ly/win-rasdial-config 
+// http://bit.ly/win-rasdial-config
 
 // Handy reading material
 // https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc957992.aspx
@@ -37,31 +37,31 @@
 // The #define below enables/disables a second (OPTIONAL) serial port that prints out interesting diagnostic messages.
 // Change to SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES to enable diagnostics messages. You need to wire a second serial port to your mbed hardware to monitor this.
 // Note - the LPC11U24 does NOT have a second serial port
-#define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES /* change to SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES for debug messages */
+#define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO /* change to SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES for debug messages */
 
 // here we define the OPTIONAL, second debug serial port for the various target boards
 // insert your target board's port here if it's not in yet - if it works, please send it to me - thanks!!!
-#if !defined(SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO) 
-#if defined(TARGET_LPC1768)
-Serial xx(p9, p10); // Second serial port on LPC1768 - not required to run, if you get compile error here, change #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES to #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-#elif defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_F446RE) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_L152RE) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_L053R8) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_L476RG) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_F401RE)
-Serial xx(PC_10, PC_11); // Second serial port on NUCLEO boards - not required to run, if you get compile error here, change #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES to #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-#elif defined(TARGET_LPC11U24)
-#error The LPC11U24 does not have a second serial port to use for debugging - change SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES back to SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
+#ifdef SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES
+    #if defined(TARGET_LPC1768)
+        Serial xx(p9, p10); // Second serial port on LPC1768 - not required to run, if you get compile error here, change #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES to #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
+    #elif defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_F446RE) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_L152RE) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_L053R8) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_L476RG) || defined(TARGET_NUCLEO_F401RE)
+        Serial xx(PC_10, PC_11); // Second serial port on NUCLEO boards - not required to run, if you get compile error here, change #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES to #define SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
+    #elif defined(TARGET_LPC11U24)
+        #error The LPC11U24 does not have a second serial port to use for debugging - change SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES back to SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
+    #else
+        #error Add your target board's second serial port here if you want to use debugging - or choose SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
+    #endif
+    #define debug(x...) xx.printf (x) /* if we have a serial port we print debug messages */
 #else
-#error Add your target board's second serial port here if you want to use debugging - or choose SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-#endif
-
-#define debug(x...) xx.printf (x) /* if we have a serial port we print debug messages */
-
-#else
-#define debug(x...) {} /* if we don't have a serial port we do nothing */
+    #define debug(x...) {} /* if we don't have a serial port we do nothing */
 #endif
 
 // verbosity flags used in debug printouts - change to 1 to see increasingly more detailed debug info.
 #define v0 1
 #define v1 0
 #define v2 0
+#define IP_HEADER_DUMP_YES /* YES for ip header dump */
+#define TCP_HEADER_DUMP_YES /* YES for tcp header dump */
 
 // this is the webpage we serve when we get an HTTP request to root (/)
 // keep size under ~900 bytes to fit into a single PPP packet
@@ -98,7 +98,6 @@
 // a structure to keep all our ppp globals in
 struct pppType {
     int online; // we hunt for a PPP connection if this is zero
-    unsigned int ident; // our IP ident value
     int crc; // for calculating IP and TCP CRCs
     int ledState; // state of LED1
     int httpPageCount;
@@ -121,6 +120,9 @@
         int frameStartIndex; // frame start marker
         int frameEndIndex; // frame end marker
     } hdlc; // hdlc frame objects
+    struct {
+        unsigned int ident; // our IP ident value (outgoing frame count)
+    } ip; // ip related object
 };
 
 pppType ppp; // our global - definitely not thread safe
@@ -135,7 +137,7 @@
     ppp.rx.head=0;
     ppp.rx.buflevel=0;
     ppp.pkt.len=0;
-    ppp.ident=1000;
+    ppp.ip.ident=10000; // easy to recognize in ip packet dumps
     ppp.ledState=0;
     ppp.hdlc.frameStartIndex=0;
     ppp.httpPageCount=0;
@@ -183,8 +185,8 @@
             if (ch == 0x7E) {
                 ppp.online = 1;
                 debug("HDLC Frame (0x7E)\n");
-            }                
-        }            
+            }
+        }
         ppp.rx.head = hd; // update head pointer
         ppp.rx.buflevel++;
     }
@@ -365,7 +367,6 @@
 
 unsigned int dataCheckSum(unsigned char * ptr, int len)
 {
-
     unsigned int sum=0;
     unsigned char placeHolder;
     if (len&1) {
@@ -472,85 +473,78 @@
 
 void IGMPpacket()   // internet group management protocol
 {
-    if (v0) {
-        debug("IGMP type=%d \n", ppp.pkt.buf[28]);
-    }
+    if (v0) debug("IGMP type=%d \n", ppp.pkt.buf[28]);
 }
 
-void dumpHeaderIP ()
+void dumpHeaderIP (int outGoing)
 {
-    if (v0) {
-        char * ipPkt = ppp.pkt.buf+4; // ip packet start
-#ifndef SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-        char * version =    ipPkt; // top 4 bits
-        char * ihl =        ipPkt; // bottom 4 bits
-        char * dscp =       ipPkt+1; // top 6 bits
-        char * ecn =        ipPkt+1; // lower 2 bits
-        char * pktLen =     ipPkt+2; // 2 bytes
-        char * ident =      ipPkt+4; // 2 bytes
-        char * flags =      ipPkt+6; // 2 bits
-        char * ttl =        ipPkt+8; // 1 byte
-        char * protocol =   ipPkt+9; // 1 byte
-        char * headercheck= ipPkt+10; // 2 bytes
+#if defined(IP_HEADER_DUMP_YES) && defined(SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES)
+    char * ipPkt = ppp.pkt.buf+4; // ip packet start
+    char * ident =      ipPkt+4;  // 2 bytes
+    char * srcAdr =     ipPkt+12; // 4 bytes
+    char * dstAdr =     ipPkt+16; // 4 bytes = total of 20 bytes
+#ifdef UNUSED_IP_VARIABLES
+    char * version =    ipPkt;    // top 4 bits
+    char * ihl =        ipPkt;    // bottom 4 bits
+    char * dscp =       ipPkt+1;  // top 6 bits
+    char * ecn =        ipPkt+1;  // lower 2 bits
+    char * pktLen =     ipPkt+2;  // 2 bytes
+    char * flags =      ipPkt+6;  // 2 bits
+    char * ttl =        ipPkt+8;  // 1 byte
+    char * protocol =   ipPkt+9;  // 1 byte
+    char * headercheck= ipPkt+10; // 2 bytes
+    int versionIP = (version[0]>>4)&0xf;
+    int headerSizeIP = (ihl[0]&0xf)*4;
+    int dscpIP = (dscp[0]>>2)&0x3f;
+    int ecnIP = ecn[0]&3;
+    int packetLength = (pktLen[0]<<8)|pktLen[1]; // ip total packet length
+    int flagsIP = flags[0]>>14&3;
+    int ttlIP = ttl[0];
+    int protocolIP = protocol[0];
+    unsigned int checksumIP = (headercheck[0]<<8)|headercheck[1];
 #endif
-        char * srcAdr =     ipPkt+12; // 4 bytes
-        char * dstAdr =     ipPkt+16; // 4 bytes = total of 20 bytes
-
-#ifndef SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-        int versionIP = (version[0]>>4)&0xf;
-        int headerSizeIP = (ihl[0]&0xf)*4;
-        int dscpIP = (dscp[0]>>2)&0x3f;
-        int ecnIP = ecn[0]&3;
-        int packetLength = (pktLen[0]<<8)|pktLen[1]; // ip total packet length
-        int identIP = (ident[0]<<8)|ident[1];
-        int flagsIP = flags[0]>>14&3;
-        int ttlIP = ttl[0];
-        int protocolIP = protocol[0];
-        unsigned int checksumIP = (headercheck[0]<<8)|headercheck[1];
+    int identIP = (ident[0]<<8)|ident[1];
+#ifndef DUMP_FULL_IP_ADDRESS
+    xx.printf("IP %d.%d.%d.%d %d.%d.%d.%d ",srcAdr[0],srcAdr[1],srcAdr[2],srcAdr[3], dstAdr[0],dstAdr[1],dstAdr[2],dstAdr[3]); // full ip addresses
+#else
+    xx.printf("IP %d %d ",srcAdr[3], dstAdr[3]); // short format - only least significant byte of the ip addresses
 #endif
-
-        char srcIP [16];
-        snprintf(srcIP,16, "%d.%d.%d.%d", srcAdr[0],srcAdr[1],srcAdr[2],srcAdr[3]);
-        char dstIP [16];
-        snprintf(dstIP,16, "%d.%d.%d.%d", dstAdr[0],dstAdr[1],dstAdr[2],dstAdr[3]);
-        debug("IP %s %s v%d h%d d%d e%d L%03d ",srcIP,dstIP,versionIP,headerSizeIP,dscpIP,ecnIP,packetLength);
-        debug("i%04x f%d t%d p%d C%04x\n",identIP,flagsIP,ttlIP,protocolIP,checksumIP);
-        while ( pc.readable() ) fillbuf();
-    }
+    xx.printf("Ident %05d ",identIP); // ident is a good way to correlate our dumps with net monitor or wireshark traces
+#ifndef TCP_HEADER_DUMP_YES
+    xx.putc('\n'); // there is no TCP header dump, so terminate the line with \n
+#endif
+#endif
 }
 
-void dumpHeaderTCP()
+void dumpHeaderTCP(int outGoing)
 {
-    if( v0 ) {
-        int headerSizeIP     = (ppp.pkt.buf[4]&0xf)*4; // header size of ip portion
-        char * tcpStart      =  ppp.pkt.buf+4+headerSizeIP; // start of tcp packet
-#ifndef SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-        char * seqtcp        = tcpStart + 4;  // 4 bytes
-        char * acktcp        = tcpStart + 8;  // 4 bytes
-#endif
-        char * flagbitstcp   = tcpStart + 12; // 9 bits
-#ifndef SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_NO
-        unsigned int seq = (seqtcp[0]<<24)|(seqtcp[1]<<16)|(seqtcp[2]<<8)|(seqtcp[3]);
-        unsigned int ack = (acktcp[0]<<24)|(acktcp[1]<<16)|(acktcp[2]<<8)|(acktcp[3]);
-#endif
-        int flags = ((flagbitstcp[0]&1)<<8)|flagbitstcp[1];
+#if defined(TCP_HEADER_DUMP_YES) && defined(SERIAL_PORT_MONITOR_YES)
+    int headerSizeIP     = (ppp.pkt.buf[4]&0xf)*4; // header size of ip portion
+    char * tcpStart      =  ppp.pkt.buf+4+headerSizeIP; // start of tcp packet
+    char * seqtcp        = tcpStart + 4;  // 4 bytes
+    char * acktcp        = tcpStart + 8;  // 4 bytes
+    char * flagbitstcp   = tcpStart + 12; // 9 bits
+    unsigned int seq = (seqtcp[0]<<24)|(seqtcp[1]<<16)|(seqtcp[2]<<8)|(seqtcp[3]);
+    unsigned int ack = (acktcp[0]<<24)|(acktcp[1]<<16)|(acktcp[2]<<8)|(acktcp[3]);
+    if (seq && ack) {} // shut up the compiler about unused variables
+    int flags = ((flagbitstcp[0]&1)<<8)|flagbitstcp[1];
 
-        char flagInfo[10]; // text string presentating the TCP flags
-        memset(flagInfo,'.', 9); // fill string with "........."
-        memset(flagInfo+9,0,1); // null terminate string
+    char flagInfo[9]; // text string presentating the 8 most important TCP flags
+    memset(flagInfo,'.', 8); // fill string with "........"
+    flagInfo[8]=0; // null terminate string
 
-        if (flags & (1<<0)) flagInfo[8]='F';
-        if (flags & (1<<1)) flagInfo[7]='S';
-        if (flags & (1<<2)) flagInfo[6]='R';
-        if (flags & (1<<3)) flagInfo[5]='P';
-        if (flags & (1<<4)) flagInfo[4]='A';
-        if (flags & (1<<5)) flagInfo[3]='U';
-        if (flags & (1<<6)) flagInfo[2]='E';
-        if (flags & (1<<7)) flagInfo[1]='C';
-        if (flags & (1<<8)) flagInfo[0]='N';
-        debug("TCP Flags %s Seq %u Ack %u\n", flagInfo, seq, ack); // show the flags in debug
-        while ( pc.readable() ) fillbuf();
-    }
+    if (flags & (1<<0)) flagInfo[7]='F';
+    if (flags & (1<<1)) flagInfo[6]='S';
+    if (flags & (1<<2)) flagInfo[5]='R';
+    if (flags & (1<<3)) flagInfo[4]='P';
+    if (flags & (1<<4)) flagInfo[3]='A';
+    if (flags & (1<<5)) flagInfo[2]='U';
+    if (flags & (1<<6)) flagInfo[1]='E';
+    if (flags & (1<<7)) flagInfo[0]='C';
+    xx.printf("%s Seq %10u\n", flagInfo, seq); // tcp flags and the sequence number
+    if( (flags == (1<<4)) && outGoing ) // if this is a pure ack its probably then of the TCP link
+        xx.putc('\n'); // so insert an extra line to mark the end of the conversation
+#endif
 }
 
 int httpResponse(char * dataStart)
@@ -566,7 +560,7 @@
     xFetch = strncmp(dataStart, "GET /x", 6); // found GET /x , respond to both HTTP/1.<anything>
     // for example, in linux, xFetch can be used as:   echo GET /x | nc 172.10.10.2
     if( (httpGetRoot==0) || (xFetch==0) ) {
-        n=n+sprintf(n+dataStart,"HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\nServer: mbed-PPP-Blinky\r\n"); // 200 OK header
+        n=n+sprintf(n+dataStart,"HTTP/1.1 200 OK \r\nServer: mbed-PPP-Blinky \r\n"); // 200 OK header
     } else {
         n=n+sprintf(n+dataStart,"HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found\r\nServer: mbed-PPP-Blinky\r\n"); // 404 header
     }
@@ -695,14 +689,12 @@
     windowsizetcp[0]=2; // tcp window size = 700
     windowsizetcp[1]=0xbc; // tcp windows size = 700
 
-    int doFin = 0; // flag to see if we have to send an extra FIN message to shut down the link
-
     // A sparse TCP flag interpreter that implements stateless TCP connections
 
     switch ( flagsTCP ) {
         case TCP_FLAG_SYN:
             flagsOut = TCP_FLAG_SYN | TCP_FLAG_ACK; // something wants to connect - acknowledge it
-            seq_out = seq_in+0x1000U; // create a new sequence number using their sequence as a base
+            seq_out = seq_in+0x10000000U; // create a new sequence number using their sequence as a base
             ack_out++; // for SYN flag we have to increase the sequence by 1
             break;
         case TCP_FLAG_ACK | TCP_FLAG_PSH:
@@ -715,7 +707,6 @@
             break;
         case TCP_FLAG_FIN | TCP_FLAG_PSH | TCP_FLAG_ACK:
         case TCP_FLAG_FIN | TCP_FLAG_ACK:
-        case TCP_FLAG_RST:
             ack_out++; // for FIN flag we always have to increase sequence by 1
             break;
         case TCP_FLAG_FIN:
@@ -737,8 +728,6 @@
     memcpy(srctcp, dsttcp,2);
     memcpy(dsttcp, tempHold,2); // swap ip port source/dest
 
-sendTCP:
-
     acktcp[0]=ack_out>>24;
     acktcp[1]=ack_out>>16;
     acktcp[2]=ack_out>>8;
@@ -751,10 +740,10 @@
 
     flagbitstcp[1] = flagsOut; // update the TCP flags
 
-    // increment the ip ident number
-    ppp.ident++; // get next ident number for our packet
-    ident[0] = ppp.ident>>8;
-    ident[1] = ppp.ident>>0; // insert OUR ident
+    // increment our outgoing ip packet counter
+    ppp.ip.ident++; // get next ident number for our packet
+    ident[0] = ppp.ip.ident>>8;
+    ident[1] = ppp.ip.ident>>0; // insert OUR ident
 
     // Now we recalculate all the header sizes
     int newPacketSize = headerSizeIP + headerSizeTCP + dataLen; // calculate size of the outgoing packet
@@ -786,17 +775,10 @@
     checksumtcp[0]=pseudoHeaderSum>>8;
     checksumtcp[1]=pseudoHeaderSum;
     memcpy( tcp-12, tempHold, 12); // restore the 12 bytes that the pseudo-header overwrote
-
-//    dumpHeaderIP();
-//    dumpHeaderTCP();
-
+    dumpHeaderIP(1); // dump outgoing IP header
+    dumpHeaderTCP(1); // dump outgoing TCP header
+    wait_ms(8); // wait long enoug to get 90 characters printed at 115200 bps
     send_pppFrame(); // All preparation complete - send the TCP response
-
-    if (doFin==1) { // they want to shut down the link, so we have to send another packet to close our side of the link
-        doFin=0;
-        flagsOut = TCP_FLAG_ACK | TCP_FLAG_FIN; // tell them we are also finished
-        goto sendTCP; // send our final packet for this conversation.
-    }
 }
 
 void dumpDataTCP()
@@ -816,8 +798,8 @@
 
 void TCPpacket()
 {
-    dumpHeaderIP();
-    dumpHeaderTCP();
+    dumpHeaderIP(0);     // dump incoming packet header
+    dumpHeaderTCP(0);   // dump incoming packet header
     if (v2) {
         dumpDataTCP();
     }
@@ -951,9 +933,9 @@
             int rx = pc_getBuf(); // get the character
             if (rx==FRAME_7E) {
                 ppp.hdlc.frameEndIndex=oldTail; // mark the frame end character
-                
+
                 processHDLCFrame(ppp.hdlc.frameStartIndex, ppp.hdlc.frameEndIndex); // process the frame
-                
+
                 ppp.rx.rtail = ppp.rx.tail;
                 ppp.hdlc.frameStartIndex = ppp.rx.tail; // where next frame will start
                 break;
@@ -965,7 +947,7 @@
 void scanForConnectString()
 {
     while(ppp.online == 0) {
-        fillbuf();
+        fillbuf(); // gather received characters
         // search for Windows Dialup Networking "Direct Connection Between Two Computers" expected connect string
         char * found1 = strstr( (char *)ppp.rx.buf, "CLIENT" );
         if (found1 != NULL) {
@@ -984,6 +966,22 @@
 
 
 
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
 int main()
 {
     pc.baud(115200); // USB virtual serial port