What authentication methods are supported under VXI-11?

[ianchan1970]

Hi,

I'm wondering if there is a "standard" (i.e. widely used) authentication protocol for securing connections to instruments over VXI-11.
I've read the VXI-11 specification, and it says "security control is beyond the scope of this specification."

A related question is, does NI-VISA or VISA for LabView support any form of authentication when connecting to instruments over VXI-11?

Thanks!
- Ian

[LoganS]

This may be a basic question, but what exactly are you looking for as far as authentication? VXI-11 is fully supported by all versions of NI-VISA 2.6 and above, so if you have a VXI-11 instrument, you can add such an instrument to you system through MAX. When creating the instance of your VXI-11 instrument, if you manually enter in an IP address and LAN device name, you can skip the step to validate your instrument. If you choose the option to browse the local subnet, you can only add those VXI-11 instruments that exist on your subnet, or if you manually create the instrument you can validate the information to ensure that you can communicate with the device. However, I'm not really sure if this is what you are looking for. Please let me know.

Logan S.

[ianchan1970]

VXI-11 provides for an authentication field, which could be used to log a user into a remote instrument.
Does NI-VISA support the use of the authentication field?

[In the VXI-11 specification, there is a 400 byte field that can be used for authentication between intrument and client.
Unfortunately, the specification does not say how this field could or should be used, which is why I think it's not used at all.]

Thanks,
- Ian

[Robert M]

Unfortunately NI-VISA has no support for authentication in VXI-11.  It looks like the spec may have left room open for it but never implemented it, but that's just my guess.

Thanks,