Scream can act as both a data Server and a data Client. Two pages of the network control window each control one aspect.
The server is responsible for acquiring data from local serial ports, and transmitting it to clients.
The client is responsible for requesting data from a server, receiving the data, and data recovery in the event of network losses.
Scream’s network capabilities can operate in two models, push or pull. In the push model, the Scream server actively transmits data to specified clients without request - Scream pushes the data to the client.
In the pull model, the Scream server will respond to requests from a client to send it data, the client pulls the data from scream.
Server Buffer page
Scream as a server needs to buffer past data transmissions, in case a client needs to re-request data that was lost in transmisssion. Scream v4.4 and older used a memory-based buffer which was limited to a relatively small size, and thus the backfilling that a client could request was similarly limited to short-period outages.
Scream 4.5 and onwards supports the use of disk-based buffering which the user can then configure to support large backfill capability. The Server Buffer page is used to control this feature.
All network operations use the same single common port number. This is set in the ‘Port used for all network communications’ option.