How do I establish a dial-up connection in Labview to FTP files (I have the internet connectivity toolkit)?

[Tom at Onset]

I'm writing an application that will automatically update files on a server, using the internet toolkit's FTP vi's. It works fine with a LAN, but I'm not sure how to establish a dial-up connection via a telephone modem.

Ultimately, I'd like the program to dial-up, connect, ftp files, then hang up. So far I have used AT commands through the serial compatiblity vi's to dial up and logon to a local internet provider. The provider then spat out an IP number and an MTU number (1524), followed by periodic spurts of garbabe.

Any help in getting to the next level would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Tom

[Ben]

Hi Tom,

I have seen others do this by just using the networking that is built into windows. It involved configuring the dial-up network connections. I am sorry, but I am not a OS guy and I can not give you the details.

If you do not get answers on this list, I would recomend you re-post this to the LV general list where there are many more OS guru's lurking that may be able to point you to a link.

Trying to help,

Ben

[Zvezdana S.]

Tom,
You CANNOT dial-up to the ISP using the Internet Developers Toolkit. The toolkit assumes you already have a valid TCP/IP connection. However, many web browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer have auto-dialing options that will start dial-up networking automatically when you launch your browser. The only trouble is that the auto-dial wizards can require the user to push buttons, but there is a Shareware program called DUNCE which will take care of the button pushes for you in the auto-dial wizards so the user does not have to intervene in the dial-up process. You can recommend to the customer that the lauch their browser from LV and then have the browser configured for auto-dial and that should take care of the problem. I did not actually try this o
ut myself, but in theory it should work.

Zvezdana S.
National Instruments

[Tom at Onset]

Zvezdana,

I found out how to do this without using the internet toolkit--by having the system execute vi run a batch file.

Windows NT, 2000, and XP all have rasdial.exe which controls Windows' dial-up adapters. Windows 95, 98, and ME need a freeware download of the rasdial equivolant: rasdial95.exe.

Here's example text from a batch file that will connect to the internet via a dial-up adapter:


@echo off
rasdial "My Connection" "username" password


where My Connection is the name of the dial-up adapter. After saving this as connect.bat (or something), you can run it from labview using the system execute vi.

A batch file with similar text can be made to disconnect:

@echo off
rasdial "My Connection" /disconnect


Tom