Q&A General

CopperLan is a powerful communication system which, next to its compatibility with MIDI, offers a lot more than just a protocol. (e.g. virtual and physical networking, auto-identification, streaming management, synchronized editing, ...)
These many capabilities place it in a different category. It is up to the implementer/designer to decide whether MIDI or CopperLan is better suited for any given application.

Nothing! To communicate with the outside world, CopperLan uses the interfaces that are present on every computer.
The CopperLan Manager is available at no cost. From here on, your computer is ready to run CopperLan applications as well as MIDI over CopperLan.

OSC is essentially a means of transmitting parameter information according to user-defined terms. While it can be transmitted through networks, OSC is not by itself handling or managing any of the network aspects.
CopperLan on the other hand is largely standardizing many practices and numerous parameters. Moreover, the network management capabilities are at its roots.
What this all means is that CopperLan can certainly handle the linking and transfer of OSC messages. However, the reconciliation of the loosely defined OSC structures and data format, with the CopperLan organized methods will be all left to the end user. Every and each OSC implementation has its own quirks, leading to a unique mapping.

Two approaches are possible for combining OSC and CopperLan:

• OSC can be handled by using CopperLan as a transport only, benefiting from the plug&play, non-ip assignment, Ethernet/USB/Firewire/... bridging, flow control, etc, but still relying on purely OSC (non-CopperLan) descriptions of the parameters.
• OSC can be mapped in a neat and organized way so that it makes full use of the CopperLan message structure, which by the way, will guarantee a better interoperability. This requires having a well defined OSC/CopperLan bridge application.

It is not our goal to develop OSC bridging applications ourselves but we are definitely supporting such initiative.

CopperLan is an initiative of Klavis Technologies s.a., a company totally independent from the companies implementing CopperLan. This independence forms the guarantee that CopperLan evolves harmoniously to the benefit of all parties involved.

Since day one, CopperLan was planned to follow the evolution of the market. It currently runs on all 32/64 bit versions of Windows XP, Vista, Seven and MAC-OS X (Mac Intel).
We are convinced of the relevance of porting CopperLan to Linux and plans are in place to support it in the future. Right now, it is available for Embedded Linux on ARM based processors.
We have applications for Apple's iOS, and we plan to follow other developments as they unfold.

Sensible of the philosophy of the freeware community, CopperLan is willing to support these goals by offering a cost-free model.

Since CopperLan does fine with Ethernet, it flows equally well through Wi-Fi. For most uses requiring instant reaction time, the added latency due to data encryption and error correction inherent in all wireless communications may not be acceptable; nevertheless, non real-time applications such as editing could certainly benefit from being cable-free.