Datasocket security

[Craig Graham]

There doesn't seem to be much information on security in the documentation
for datasocket.

Does anyone know if there's a way of determining or restricting the IP
address from which a connection can originate?

--
Dr. Craig Graham, Software Engineer
Advanced Analysis and Integration Limited, UK

[aperez]

Greetings Dr. Graham,

You can specify which machines can create items, write items, and read items with the DataSocket Server Manager. Different machines can have different access to different DataSocket items. You can also specify items that are automatically created and given an initial value when the server is started. Just remember that changes that you make to the server take affect the next time that you launch a DataSocket Server.
To launch the DataSocket Server Manager, go to Start Menu >> National Instruments >> DataSocket >> DataSocket Server Manager. I've attached an image of the DS Server Manager in case you haven't seen it before.

Hope this helps,
Azucena

[Craig Graham]

Yes, I know we can block access from unauthorised hosts in th Server
Manager, but this is somewhat unwieldy for my purposes.

We are writing the software for a PC-controlled instrument and wish to make
a "client-server" architecture, with a server application directly
controlling the instrument and client applications connecting to it via
DataSocket. Precise details are not yet sorted, but all the options feature
a datasocket item which can be written to by any clients to send commands to
the server. Different users will log in at different times from the clients,
and are able to execute different levels of command- from simply retrieving
the previous hour of data, for instance, to changing instrument
configuration and restarting the experiment.

We'd like to have some way of tracking which connections are, for instance,
originating offsite and limit, but not block, their access. And we want to
do this without having to create a seperate socket for each class of IP
addresses and setting the accessibility in Server Manager, since this would
complicate both the client design and the roll-out of the finished product,
which should be installable by a customer from a single InstallShield
wizard.

If we can create a new server item on the fly and restrict it to a
particular IP address it would help a lot. Is this possible, without having
to re-write the .ini file and shut down/restart the server (horribly messy)?

--
Dr. Craig Graham, Software Engineer
Advanced Analysis and Integration Limited, UK


"aperez" wrote in message
news:506500000005000000D3970000-1027480788000@exchange.ni.com...
> Greetings Dr. Graham,
>
> You can specify which machines can create items, write items, and read
> items with the DataSocket Server Manager. Different machines can have
> different access to different DataSocket items. You can also specify
> items that are automatically created and given an initial value when
> the server is started. Just remember that changes that you make to the
> server take affect the next time that you launch a DataSocket Server.
> To launch the DataSocket Server Manager, go to Start Menu >> National
> Instruments >> DataSocket >> DataSocket Server Manager. I've attached
> an image of the DS Server Manager in case you haven't seen it before.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Azucena

[dwm]

Dr. Graham,

The DataSocket Server reads in its security settings from the cwdssini.dss file at startup. Therefore, I am afraid that creating a new server item on the fly and restricting it to a particular IP address will require re-writing the cwdssini.dss file and shutting down/restarting the server.

Don