I am developing an application to read and control several devices from a computer/laptop. This software will eventually be deployed to a customer who is integrating it into a larger system. I don't have control over the the computer or IT rules that may require some network settings to conform to the facility rules. While not required, I would like to offer them the option to read and change the signals that my software will control and figured a Modbus slave might be a good way to do this. Now I have arrived at a point where I think that my program could also use the Modbus slave. So instead of my program directly sending signals to the devices, I would just have a Modbus program that updates the holding registers I have laid out. However I am a little worried that because these signals are being used in the TCP/IP communication protocol there might be a possibility that it might fail if say the computer is not connected to any network, or the network adapter is disabled. So my question is, do I need to worry about the network, lack of a network or the possibility that network connectors be disabled?
For clarity I am using the NI Modbus library and plugging "localhost" into the Modbus master after starting the Modbus slave.
