Overview

While the high level lwIP sequential API is good for programs that are themselves sequential and can benefit from the blocking open-read-write-close paradigm, lwIP itself is event based by nature. If an application can be written with an event-based approach, then it becomes possible to integrate directly with the event-based design of the core lwIP code.

The raw TCP/IP API allows the application program to integrate better with the TCP/IP code. Program execution is event based by having callback functions being called from within the TCP/IP code. The TCP/IP code and the application program both run in the same thread. The sequential API has a much higher overhead and is not very well suited for small systems since it forces a multithreaded paradigm on the application.

The raw TCP/IP interface is not only faster in terms of code execution time but is also less memory intensive. The drawback is that program development is somewhat harder and application programs written for the raw TCP/IP interface are more difficult to understand. Still, this is the preferred way of writing applications that should be small in code size and memory usage.

Both APIs can be used simultaneously by different application programs. In fact, the sequential API is implemented as an application program using the raw TCP/IP interface.

An example of an application using the raw API can be found in the tests/ subdirectory of the lwIP eCos package. This test is built when the CDL configuration option CYGBLD_NET_LWIP_BUILD_MANUAL_TESTS is enabled. This raw API application acts as a simple HTTP server.