Watt-32 Homepage

Watt-32 tcp/ip Homepage

This page contains my port of Waterloo tcp/ip (WatTCP). Watt-32 is an enhanced version of Geof Cooper's TinyTCP and Erick Engelke's WatTCP. The latest version is dated November 1999 with features integrated into Watt-32.

Watt-32 is a library for making networked TCP/IP programs in the language of C and C++ under DOS and Windows-NT. Both 16-bit real-mode and 32-bit protected-mode is supported.

For DOS, Watt-32 requires a packet-driver (PKTDRVR) to access the data-link layer (Ether-PPP, SLIP or Ethernet. Token-Ring is un-tested). With the correct packet-driver, it will run under all versions of Windows too. I highly recommend SwsVpkt which works much faster than Dan Lanciani's NDIS3PKT. With the SwsVpkt or NDIS3PKT drivers one can connect to Windows services (on the same machine) from a DOS-box too.

For Windows, WinPcap and NPF.SYS are required. Note that Windows 95, 98 and ME are not supported.

The name Watt-32 was chosen to signal the emphasis on 32-bit platforms (Although 16-bit compiler are also supported). What, besides embedded systems, is DOS good for these days if not running high-performance 32-bit programs. And the embedded market is booming; with the price of PC-104/Ethernet cards, Watt-32 could be used in a lot of fancy boxes. How about an IP-telephone, MP3 home-player or an Internet Radio?

These are some of the new functions in Watt-32:

DHCP-client: An RFC-1541/2131 compliant DHCP-client allocates an IP for you, sets the netmask and gateways etc.
User doesn't need to configure wattcp.cfg. The DHCP-configuration is stored to a temporary file to speedup consecutive program launches.
RARP-client: Dan Kegel contributed a RARP-client which translates your Ethernet address into a usable IP-address.
syslog-client: A simple UDP based client that logs to file and/or another host. Output is compatible with the BSD version.
But it lacks log-file rotation.
TFTP-client: A small UDP client which could be used to transfer an OS image or any file specified at startup. Great for embedded boxes and/or hosts using DHCP or fixed IP address.
ICMP-redirect: Watt-32 automatically switches gateway if an ICMP- redirect is received. Optionally an "ICMP-address mask request" will check your configured net-mask.
PPP-support: Watt-32 supports both types of PPP-drivers; i.e. types that emulate Ethernet frames and those who don't. Antonio Lopez Molero has written the excellent DOS-PPP driver that works very well with Watt-32.
Protocol debugger: A much improved protocol debugger/tracer analyses IP (ICMP, UDP and TCP) and ARP/RARP packets to/from your host (or broadcast). Various headers can be filtered. DNS-records, IP/TCP options and PPP/PPPoE packets are also decoded. Can also write on pcap format (optionally gzip compressed) to make it easier for later analysis using tcpdump, tcptrace or Wireshark.
BIND Resolver: A port of the Unix resolver/DNS library. This was added mainly to implement the getmxbyname() function used to verify email addresses (see vrfy below).
File based lookup: User may specify fixed IP/names in a hosts file. All the getXbyY() functions from <netdb.h> are supported. Also supports loading and parsing of /etc/services, /etc/protocols and /etc/ethers.
IDNA support: Handle non-ASCII characters in DNS forward and reverse lookups (A, AAAA and PTR). Converts names to/from "ASCII Compatible Encoding" (ACE) as needed (ref. RFC-3490).
BSD-Sockets: Watt-32 tries to mimic the BSD-socket API with support for SOCK_DGRAM, SOCK_STREAM, SOCK_RAW and Linux-style SOCK_PACKET. Handles blocking or non-blocking I/O (but no async I/O). Most header files required to port Unix network programs to Watt-32/DOS are provided. This API needs some work to better support raw-sockets, compliance to the man-pages, "Out-of-Band" data etc. Watt-32 is officially supported in the OpenSSL library, cURL ftp/http/https file retriever and the Web-browser Lynx.
Microsoft has disabled sending with SOCK_RAW sockets in Windows XP SP2. This should have no impact on Watt-32 programs since it doesn't depend on Winsock in any way.
DNS caching: The Windows version can query the global DNS cache (DNSAPI.DLL) before querying any configured name-server. Thus speeding up lookups and keeping the UDP traffic down. Note: DNSAPI.DLL is used dynamically. Hence programs operate normally if Winsock (not likely) or WinDNS (the DNS caching client service) isn't installed.

Other planned (or not-yet-working) things include:

TCP features like Path MTU, window scaling, SACK (selective acknowledge), time-stamping, PAWS (protect against wrapped segments) and better retransmit strategy.
IPv6 support and auto-configuration. Only ICMPv6 Neighbour Discovery is working somewhat at the moment.
Support for Token-Ring, FDDI, AX25 and ARCnet drivers is half-done due to lack of test environment (contributions welcome).
Support multiple real and/or pseudo interfaces with more powerful routing. This is needed to get IPv6-to-IPv4 tunneling (Teredo/6to4) to work.
Build as a dynamic loadable module; A DXE3 for djgpp 2.04. Or a WATT-32.DLL for CauseWay and Pharlap|TNT.
A client (background daemon) for submitting your IP-address to DynDns.org at regular intervals.
Use a runtime-copied packet-driver receiver for all targets (Ref. USE_FAST_PKT and asmpkt.nas). Thus preventing segment fixup errors in Blinker (for small/large models). Rewrite to allow > 64 kByte receive buffer.
For the Win32 version try sending/receiving from the system loopback-device (instead of looping internally).
I have no idea yet how to accomplish this. Hook into the LSP chain?

Supported Platforms

Watt-32 supports these compilers and environments:

GNU C/C++ 2.7 (or later) with djgpp 2.x DOS-extender.
Metaware HighC 3.x with PharLap DOS-extenders.
Borland C/C++ 4.x (or later), small/large/flat (PowerPak) models.
Watcom C/C++ 11.x (or later), small/large/flat (DOS4GW/Pharlap) models.
Microsoft Quick C v6.0 (or later), small/large model (Not fully working. Will be dropped).
Digital Mars Compiler 8.34 (or later), small/large/32-bit (FlashTek X32) models.
LADSoft's CC386 2.32 (or later), flat model only (Not fully working).
Native WIN32 versions: MinGW, CygWin, Visual-C, OpenWatcom, Clang, CBuilder or PellesC.
Native WIN64 versions: MinGW-w64, CygWin, Visual-C, or Clang.

Download

The current version of Watt-32 is 2.2 dev-rel. 11. Dated July 2018:

Binaries	watt32b 2.2 dev.rel.11	18 MBytes
Sources	watt32s 2.2 dev.rel.11	3.3 MBytes
Docs/RFCs	watt32d 2.1 dev.rel.1	876k Terribly outdated, I know..
	Online documentation	Doxygen generated documentation or as a compressed html

See also misc projects for other Watt-32 / MinGW related packages and patches.
And various tcpdump/libpcap based applications for DOS.

Watt-32 Network Tools

The binary distribution contains some tools in addition to the one in the original Waterloo package:

archie:	Searches Archie (Prospero) servers for files and directories. Regular expressions is supported. Original design by Clifford Neuman for the Prospero Project, changes by George Ferguson and me.
bing:	Braden's Ping is yet another ping tool. Written by Bob Braden at Information Sciences Institute of USC.
country:	IP-address to country converter. Queries the DNS mapping service at countries.nerd.dk and converts the CNAME to a country code and name. Written my me.
dig:	Domain Information Groper; send domain name query packets to name servers. Lists Resource Records, Zone information, SOA, MX-records etc. Developed by: Paul Vixie (DEC), Steve Hotz and Paul Mockapetris (USC-ISI).
DOS-FTP:	A ftp-client with a conio interface. Supports auto-login, macros (.netrc style) and simple scripting. Does not support PASV mode. Mostly written by me but some modules taken from elsewhere.
DOS-VNC:	Virtual Network Console allows remote control of Unix or Windows machines from DOS. This port is currently for djgpp only (using Allegro graphics library). Original version by AT&T. Ported to DOS by Marinos J. Yannikos and me.
fping:	Fast parallell Ping. A tool to quickly ping N number of hosts to determine their reachability without flooding the network. Original version by Roland J. Schemers - Stanford University.
ftpsrv:	A small but fully functional ftp-server. Only accepts a single client at a time. Done by Luc De Cock.
host:	Send domain name query packets to name servers. Similar to dig, but with tons of options. Original version by Eric Wassenaar.
ICMP-push:	Another expert tool for sending all kinds of ICMP-packets. Not all of which are fiendly... Done by Slayer.
MathOpd:	A fast, lightweight, non-forking HTTP server. HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 compliant, virtual server and CGI support. The server also has a mailing list. Done by Michiel Boland.
MTR:	Matt's Traceroute is a very nice diagnostics tool which combines traceroute and ping into one. Requires PD-Curses library to build. Originally by Matt Kimball.
netcat:	A tool for reading and writing arbitrary data using UDP/TCP. Handy for redirecting stdin/stdout across the network. Note: Little tested with Watt-32. Created by hobbit@avian.org.
NetIO:	A djgpp/Watcom tool for measuring read/write speed across network. Win32 and OS/2 executables included for comparision and testing other end of connection. Some test results for the Watt-32 version is here. Created by Kai Uwe Rommel.
NetKalahari:	A simple text-based networked game. It uses PD-curses and is only ported to djgpp. Created by Theo Wilhelm and others.
nttcp:	An enhanced version of the ttcp speed test program. Little tested by me. I advice you to use Netio as that's fully tested and working with Watt-32. Done by Elmar Bartel.
nslookup:	An interactive DNS tool (similar to host and dig. Originally by Andrew Cherenson (UC Berkeley) and Paul Vixie (DEC).
popmail:	Simple mail retriever and sender (POP3/SMTP). Can use APOP authentication to login to POP3 server (doesn't send you password in plain-text). Walter A. Nolan wrote it, I added APOP, ISO-8859 charset etc.
rdate:	Obtain (and set) the time from a time server (UDP or TCP). Originally by Andy Tefft and Richard Henderson. Ported to Watt-32 by Ken Yap.
rdebug:	A simple server that allows telnet clients to remotely read, write and dump memory on target. Done by Ken Yap.
SMTP-cli:	A simple cmd-line SMTP client with Mime and syslog logging. For djgpp only. Little tested by me. Made by Ralf S. Engelschall.
syslogd:	Syslog Daemon for logging events/messages from Unix clients. Logs to disk or line-printer. Also synchronizes time with NTP broadcasts sent on LAN. Ported to Watt-32 by Ken Yap.
suck:	Pulls newsgroups from a NNTP news-server. Accompanying tools sorts and posts articles. Original Authors Tim Smith, Sven Goldt and Robert A. Yetman.
talk:	A chat client with colour (conio), aliases, old/new BSD-talk protocol, answer mode and logging. Ported to WatTCP by Michael Ringe.
TFTP:	The original BSD tftp (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) client ported to Watt-32.
TFTPD:	A tftp server ported to Watt-32. By Craig Leres at Lawrence Berkely Labs.
ttcp:	A benchmarking tool for determining TCP and UDP performance between 2 systems. Someone at US Army Ballistics Research Lab (BRL) did this eons ago, but it's still a nice tool. Ported to Watt-32 by Ken Yap.
vrfy:	Verifies validity of email addresses. Requires MX host to support the VRFY or EXPN commands. Original version by Eric Wassenaar.
watftp:	ftp-client program by Erick Engelke and Dean Roth. See also my own ftp-client.
wget:	A very nice utility to retrieve files from servers using HTTP, HTTPS or FTP. By Hrvoje Niksic.
WWW-Boa:	A nice little single-tasking HTTP server with CGI-support. Little tested by me. Done by Paul Phillips. Also take a look at the more advanced Go-Ahead web-server.

If your serious about WatTCP or Watt-32 development, it would be advisable to purchase of the
WATTCP Programmers Manual available here.

Comments, Watt-32 bug-fixes and contributions are welcome.
E-mail me, Gisle Vanem for comments or preferably join the Watt-32 mailing list at the URL below.

Watt-32 change.log file is here.

Do NOT

subscribe to the dead Watt-32 mailing list. Go to the GitHub project instead.