# winsockprt.cif
#
# Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Accenture. All rights reserved.
# This component and the accompanying materials are made available
# under the terms of the "Eclipse Public License v1.0"
# which accompanies this distribution, and is available
# at the URL "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html".
#
# Initial Contributors:
# Accenture - Initial contribution
#

__END__

=head1 winsockprt

=head2 Introduction

C<winsockprt> is a Symbian OS network protocol module (a plug-in to ESock) that allows Symbian OS sockets to communicate via underlying WinSock sockets.

There are various means of providing the Symbian OS emulator with a network connection (including WinTAP and NT-RAS). In the most part these other technologies are preferable to C<winsockprt> because they use the real Symbian TCP/IP stack, and so provide a more faithful emulation. However, they also tend to be more complex to configure. By contrast, C<winsockprt> is enabled with a single command and needs no further configuration.

=head2 Installation

Beyond building F<fshell> for your development environment, there is no further installation necessary.

=head2 Usage

By default C<winsockprt> is disabled. To enable it, type:

  wsp enable

or

  wsp e

Once it is enabled, any attempt by Symbian code to open a socket (or resolver) on the implicit connection (i.e. without using C<RConnection>) will result in C<winsockprt> interacting with the WinSock library to provide a connection.

To disable C<winsockprt> and go back to using the Symbian TCP/IP stack, type:

  wsp disable

or

  wsp d

To see the current state of the C<winsockprt>, type:

  wsp status

or

  wsp s

=head2 Caveats

No attempt is made to intercept the C<RConnection> API, which means that code that uses this will continue to attempt to establish a real connection. If this succeeds, then any sockets attached to the connection will again be routed through the WinSock library. However, if it was possible to establish a real connection, then there probably isn't much point in using C<winsockprt> - better to disable it and go back to using the real TCP/IP stack.

=head2 Explicit Usage

It is actually still possible to open C<winsockprt> sockets even when the module is disabled. Disabled only means that the module isn't taking the place of the Symbian TCP/IP stack. Whether disabled or not, C<winsockprt> always registers the following protocols with ESock and makes them available to clients:

  KProtocolWinsockTcp
  KProtocolWinsockUdp

These are defined in F<\epoc32\include\winsockprt.h> and allow software to explicitly use WinSock sockets along side normal Symbian sockets. This facility can be used by L<rcons|rcons> to provide remote console via WinSock on the emulator without distrupting other TCP/IP clients.

=head2 Future Development

Old versions of C<winsockprt> used to replace various parts of the Symbian networking sub-system in order to try to convince clients that a suitable connection is available. In the multi-homed world of modern Symbian OS releases this behaviour is probably not appropriate. Instead therefore, to use C<winsockprt> from via software the opens an explicit C<RConnection> suitable IAP and Network entries will need to be present in the CommDb. There is a Null Agent (C<nullagt>) that could be used to pretend to establish a connection. However, at the time of writing, there is nothing equivalent to a Null NIF that would also be needed to create a truely fake connection. It might be worth writing such a thing is this limitation is frequently hit.

=head1 See Also

L<rcons|rcons>

=head1 Copyright

Copyright (c) 2005-2010 Accenture. All rights reserved.

=cut
