TCPClient comm with Telco Switch

[Guest]

I work for a telecom company.
We need to get data from our 5ESS switches to be consumed by a .NET app.
The data I am getting back is incomplete.
For example, the beginning of the first line recvd from the device should
read:
SWT5 5e16(2) 02.00

Instead I get
a bunch of gibberish then SWT5

The text greeting message that comes up above the login prompt
gets cut up (some chars are dropped) followed by a
(tab or LF) then the text greeting continues then cuts of a few chars again
followed by another (tab or LF), etc..

The login prompt should be:
login:

But instead I get:

a TAB char

or

TAB and n:

Like a lot of examples, I am using TCPClient, incoming data into a byte array
and displaying the string data in a textbox so I can see it.

Dim responseData As [String] = [String].Empty
data = New [Byte](2048) {}
Dim bytes As Int32 = st.Read(data, 0, data.Length)
responseData = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(data, 0, bytes)
txtRetVal.Text += responseData.ToString

I have done this against UNIX applications in the past the same way without
issue.
Also, the switch will send some data, pause, then send more until I get the
results I am expecting.
It does not all happen at once. The login greeting/prompt will come in
thirds in a normal telnet session.
I cannot find any info anywhere that will help me here.
I thought maybe I needed term emulation but then I will get a large block of
the greeting message intact. If I needed emulation wouldn't it be consistant?
Thanks

 

[Guest]

If it is any help,
I was able to connect using Hyperterminal > ANSIW.
XP's Telnet does well until I enter my first password charactor to log in,
which I believe it sees as me submitting the password.

Thanks

 

[Charles Wang[MSFT]]

Hi,
My understanding of your issue is:
You used TCPClient to retrieve data from your switches; however you found
that the retrieved data was a bunch of gibberish, not as expected.
You could get the correct information on your UNIX applications.
If I have misunderstood, please let me know.

For further research, I would like to know:
1. Did you log on the switch first and then retrieve the data?
2. What was the encoding format when your UNIX applications logged on your
switch?
3. You couldn't use Telnet to retrieve data from switch due to logon
failure, right?
4. If your application uses ANSI (System.Text.Encoding.Default) encoding,
what's the result?

Charles Wang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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[Guest]

Hi Charles,
What I am trying to do with the switch is establish a session, logon, run a
status on a telephone number, capture the results as string(which would
normally be displayed on a screen) and close the session. Once I have the
status in an object, I can parse through and consume this data in .NET.
When I try to connect via Hyperterminal using ANSIW encoding, it looks/works
fine.
When I change the properties of the hyperterminal connection to use just
ANSI encoding, that also works fine. If ANSI is the default encoding for TCP
connections in dot net, would setting the encoding make a difference, or is
none applied unless you specify?
Thanks,
-Lance R.

 

[Charles Wang[MSFT]]

Dear Lance,
UTF-8 is the default encoding in .NET platform; the Default is the encoding
of system's current ANSI code page. TCPClient uses socket to send and
receive messages. It's a channel used to send stream with no default
encoding. The encoding depends on the messages. In other words, if the
server uses the ANSI/ANSIW encoding to encode and decode messages, the
client should explicitly specify ANSI as messages encoding when it sends or
receives messages.

So I recommend that you specify the ANSI encoding for sending and receiving
messages.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to let me know. It's my
pleasure to be of assistance.

Sincerely,
Charles Wang
Microsoft Online Community Support

 

[Guest]

Hi Charles, How do I specify this?

 

[Charles Wang[MSFT]]

Dear Lance,
I'm sorry that I should provide an example for you in my previous reply.

Once you have used TCPClient to connect to the server.
You can send messages to server like:
Dim strMessage as String
strMessage="Hi Lance!"
client.Send(System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(strMessage));

You can receive messages like:
Dim buffer As Byte() = New Byte(1024) {}
Dim nRet As Integer = Me.client.Receive(buffer)
Me.txtRecv.Text = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetString(buffer)

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to let me
know. It's my pleasure to be of assistance.

Sincerely,
Charles Wang
Microsoft Online Community Support

 

[Guest]

Hi Charles,
That's how I had it set up before. When I change the encoding to default, I
get the same results as before.
Any other ideas?
Thanks.

 

[Charles Wang[MSFT]]

Hi,
For troubleshooting this issue, I would like that:
1. If it's convenient for you, please mail me ([email protected]) your
code snippet of the whole communication process.
2. You can use the monitor tool NetMon or Ethereal to monitor and compare
the data sent by Hyperterminal, telnet command and your application.

Sincerely,
Charles Wang
Microsoft Online Community Support