You can interface the DLN series adapters either directly or through the DLN server application. The DLN server is a Windows Service or Linux / Mac OS X Daemon. The applications communicate with the DLN server through TCP/IP. The most prominent difference between the Direct and the Server Based interfaces is that the Direct Interface can provide you with the higher bandwidth when you transfer a large amount of data, while the Server Based Interface allows several applications to communicate with the same adapter simultaneously. For additional details please refer to the Interface Types chapter in the User Manual.
Server Based Interface
Without going into details (the details are described in the Server Base Interface implementation chapter), you need to connect to the DLN server if you use the Server Based Interface. The connection is established by calling the DlnConnect() function. The DLN Server IP address and TCP port number are passed to this function as parameters.
If the DLN series adapter is connected to the computer where you launch your application, and you don’t change the default port configuration, you can use the DlnConnectDefault() function to connect to the DLN server.
As with most of the functions that allocate resources, the established connection can be closed by calling the DlnDisconnect() function with the same parameters. Use the DlnDisconnectDefault() function to close the connection established with the DlnConnectDefault() function. If you want to close all currently opened connections, call the DlnDisconnectAll() function.
Direct Interface
The dln.dll library for the Direct Interface does not require the connection to the DLN server. It is designed to directly communicate with DLN-series adapters connected to the computer where the application is running. You are not required to call the DlnConnect(), DlnDisconnect() and DlnDisconnectAll() functions in the Direct Interface, but you can do this to make your code compatible with the Server Based Interface. These functions do nothing in the Direct Interface, they simply return the successful result code