The first section of the protocol definition file defines the protocol identification string and the Java class which is responsible to perform the I/O operations at runtime.
The COMMENT statement defines an identification string which is passed to the user interface. An operator can identify the type and version of a communication protocol used with a certain device.
The text following the COMMENT keyword is free field and principally may contain any information. The device protocols coming with the sat-nms software all follow a convention which defines the comment string as
"protocol-name X.YY YYMMDD"
where X is the major version number of the protocol, YY the minor version number and YYMMDD the release date of this protocol version. It is recommended that customer defined device protocols follow this scheme, too.
The CLASS statement defines the Java class used perform the protocol I/O steps during runtime of the MNC software. Actually TTYProtocol is the only protocol class which is applicable for customer defined protocol definitions.
Some communication protocols may be configured in some aspects of their functionality by applying protocol parameters to them. This is done with the PROTOCOLPARAMETER statement:
There may multiple PROTOCOLPARAMETER statements in one protocol definition file, each defining one aspect of the communication protocol. The key defines the parameter to set, value is the value to be assigned to this parameter.
Protocol parameters may be set either in the protocol definition file (thus defining the parameter for all uses of the protocol) or in the device driver. A definition in the device driver overwrites the setting in the protocol file.
ATTENTION: If you have multiple devices in the same device thread (INTERFACE) using different device drivers, the result is unpredictable if the drivers do not make exactly the same protocol parameter settings.
Example
PROTOCOLPARAMETER "post.content.type=application/xml"