You can either interface the DLN series adapters directly or through the DLN server application. With direct interface you can reach higher bandwidth when you transfer a large amount of data, but it only allows for one at a time application to communicate with the adapter.
Through direct interface your application directly communicates with the DLN series adapter. The library and driver help to establish this connection, but don’t route your requests.
Benefits of the direct interface:
The communication is faster than that of the server-based interface. This can be noticeable during the transfer of large amounts of data. In accordance to our measurement, during SPI transfer at high frequencies (above 10 MHz), the bandwidth became twice as fast.
In server-based interface your application connects to the DLN server by TCP/IP and the server routes your requests to the appropriate adapter.
Benefits of the server-based interface:
Several applications can communicate with the same adapter simultaneously.
The DLN-series adapter (together with the DLN server) can be connected to a remote PC (even if one is located at another part of the world). All the communication is done through TCP/IP.
Single application can manage multiple adapters that are connected to different computers.