RT and instrument communication over ethernet

[pavanb]

We plant to use a Xantrex DC PS (interface info attached) and was wondering if we can use an ethernet hub in between the Host and the RT target and have all our stand-alone instruments connected to this hub. RT will communicate with these instruments over VISA. Hope nothing is wrong with this picture and it's doable.

[Ricardo_SR]

Hello,

Having a hub in between doesn't represent any problem, except you have multiple collisions within the subnet.
Now where are you thinking of using this Ethernet board? Would that be in your Host computer? What is your RT system? Is it a PXI?
Thank you


Ricardo S.
National Instruments

[pavanb]

the board is the instruments ehternet interface. the rt system is pxi. there will be a ethernet switch in the middle that acts as the hub to which all ethernet instruments/PCs/RTs converge, like a star-topology.

[Ricardo_SR]

Thank you for the update. In that case there shouldn't be any problem. If there were any connectivity issues, then the switch should be able to fix them. The only thing is that you will need to open a different port for each instrument.

Ricardo S.
National Instruments

[pavanb]

is there a KB on this?

[Ricardo_SR]

Hi Pavan,

What exactly are you looking for? In other words, what do you think it could go wrong? The reason I am asking is that there might be several KBs or few, depending on what you are looking for. Now, NI-VISA shouldn't have any problem because it is a protocol that is used to communicate with instruments that are in a bus, like the GPIB bus or Ethernet bus, so I don't understand what could be the problem. If you have something in mind, let me know so we can discuss it.


Ricardo S.
National Instruments.