Advanced Networking
Technology (ANT) is a collection of networking protocols based on the IPNET
stack designed by the company formerly known as Interpeak. The stack was
designed to be scaleable and portable.
An abstraction layer
called IPCOM is used to perform any necessary conversions required to work with
individual operating systems. This allows core protocols to be common across
multiple platforms.
ANT is imbedded in Wind
River VxWorks Platforms 3.5 and 3.6. It is also available as an add-on (i.e., a
replacement for the native Linux stack) to Wind River Linux Platforms 1.4
through 2.0. The primary motivation for replacing the native stack is
protection of intellectual property. Developers who customize protocols or
features of the native Linux network stack are required under GPL to make these
customizations available to the open-source community. By using Wind River ANT,
they can avoid these obligations and keep their intellectual property as
differentiable value.
