Software routing..

Im new to network programming. Let me tell what my requiremets are.. And Please suggest me the psooible solutions.
I have a server computer to which a hardware is attached. The hardware works on TCP/Ip. The requirement is to connect to the hardware remotely from any client machine. So to avoid the hardware being availabe to everybody(not to keep it in public network), we have created a subnet in which the hardware and the server computer reside. Now i have to talk to the hard ware using the APIs and command sets provided by the harware vendor thro any client machine. So i need some thing ( may be a software routing) that makes it possible for the client machine to control the hardware after getting the permission from the server.Server computer is also part of the bigger network. In other words server compuet will have 2 ethernet cards one for talking to the hardware another for talking to the rest of the world. Any help / code to do this is greately appreciated.

well, thats quite a setup there. It's going to be pretty hard, considering the fact that some routers/hubs/switches IP's are sometimes different from others. But I recommend to do the good ol' Server/Client-side architecture.

There are several solutions. One solution is socket. Another solution is COM.

Kuphryn

Well...since you want to restrict the access to the hardware, using a standard client/server approach would be the best idea in my eyes.

Client will connect to the server and request something from the hardware. The server in turn will forward this request to the hardware and wait for the response. As soon as the hardware has responded, the server will sent back the response to the client. This way, the server can restrict the access pretty easy...

As a starting point for TCP/IP communication...Winsock Programmer's FAQ...

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Originally posted by coolshashi
So i need some thing ( may be a software routing) that makes it possible for the client machine to control the hardware after getting the permission from the server.

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You need to determine if the APIs and command sets provided by the harware vendor include mechanisms for getting permission to connect to the server. If so, then you must use it.

I am not sure if there is a separate IP address for each of the two network cards but I think there would be. So just be aware that you will be using the IP address of the network card for talking only to the server. Or actually, with a separate network card, isn't there separate physical cables? I am not familiar with networks to be sure of details such as that.