IPv6 support in LabVIEW?

[Worred]

I have seen IPv6 mentioned in the roadmap a few times but it never seems to get released. Is it ever going to be released? I have a few applications that would benefit greatly by using IPv6. I have considered the LVS Tools (https://lvs-tools.co.uk/software/encryption-compendium-labview-library/) but I would prefer native support. I have also wondered if there is a way to do it with calling a Python module through LabVIEW but I don't know that much about Python except to know that it is generally slower than LabVIEW and my applications require speed. Has anyone used the LVS Tools? If so, what are the pro's and con's?

Thanks,

Rob

[rolfk]

It's an item that has been pushed out to future versions for quite some time. The current roadmap has not planned it for the coming 2 versions, so if you your project requirements are now or within reasonable short period, waiting on that is not going to be an option.

Calling Python is of course an option, as is calling WinSock through the Call Library Node. But how much is your time worth? Interfacing through the Python node has its own challenges and unless you can isolate the entire communication in your Python module and just have a fairly simple one-function call to retrieve the final result into LabVIEW, you are going to spend a lot of time on that too. WinSock is only an option if you understand C programming and can apply that knowledge to the Call Library Node or write an external shared library in C to interface through the Call Library Node.

So I would say you have to ask yourself following questions:

1) What is my hourly rate?

2) Can I spend 50 or more hours on this before I spend more money than buying the LVS-Toolkit?

As far as money goes and unless you are not a student whose hours are not really factored anywhere, it is a complete non-brainer.

[Sergey_Kolbunov]

Replying after two years, but anyway. I'm using LVS Tools in my project, solely to have IPv6 functionality. The toolkit itself is more high-level solution oriented, I'm just using one library (Socket.lvlib) out of the big variety that ECL provides, because I just need to integrate IPv6 into our code. It is not exactly drop-in replacement for TCP primitives, but close to it. 

The problem is, with the lack of native support in LabVIEW, to support other protocols, I had to rework a lot of libraries to make them IPv6 compatible, so now I also have SNMP over IPv6, FTP over IPv6, LPD over IPv6. While with the native support I will not need to do that.

Also, my specific is that I have DUTs that I need to test over IPv6, not a NI hardware. It seems like NI only considers the possibility of communicating over IPv6 to the measurement equipment.

And yes, two years later still no support, but look here https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Native-support-for-IPv6/idi-p/1481942 the issue was raised long time ago.

[rolfk]

As you can see here, it is in the roadmap but priority is Backlog, slated for release in 2027 or later. I did develop a library around 2010 but lost interest in it after a first test release since I tried to implement IPv6, TLS and extensive property support for Windows, Linux and Mac and it got all a bit tricky to support and maintain. At the time I found some more motivation the LVS toolkit existed and I felt it was not useful to release yet another similar toolkit.

[Worred]

NI's continued delay of IPv6 support has been very frustrating and I have considered moving to another language but there are many things I like about LabVIEW and have been using it for a very long time (>25 years) so I stick with it. I did investigate the LVS Tools but our specific way we implemented the TCP protocol it did not work for us. I was told by someone in NI last summer that they were working on it but it always appears to be pushed out into the future. I have investigated trying to call python or .NET code to maybe do it but it seems like a lot of work. I agree with you, the IPv6 support needs to work with more than just NI equipment. It needs to work just like the existing networking protocols work with IPv4.

[rolfk]

Care to elaborate what specific use you have that did not allow the LVS Tool to work for you?

Adding IPv6 support to the NI TCP/IP functions for NI would be a magnitude or two of complexity easier than adding TLS support was. The Advanced Ethernet Toolkit I mentioned had both seamless OpenSSL and IPv6 support. Implementing the IPv6 part was a fraction of the effort to implementing SSL/TLS support! The reason I never released it was that it was really just early Beta quality the first time I put it out on LavaG as a trial and I got pretty much zero reaction.