Why is my remote panel so slow to load?

[thisisnotadream]

I have developed an application, built it, deployed it to the PXI chassis, tested it within the LabVIEW environment and am now attempting to deploy it so that the user does not require LabVIEW.  The best option for us is to use a remote panel. 

The problem is that when I try to open the page from Internet Explorer, it take for...ev....er to download it, often stalling near the end.  I can't blame the network easily because the PC is connected to the PXI chassis via a second network card and a cross-over cable, so nothing else is on the network.  Traffic bursts during the download occur about once every 5 seconds or so, after a few quick bursts that often get me to 50 or 75% complete, the burst come in 0.2% chunks or less.  On the rare occassion that I don't lose patience, go make a sandwich and come back to find the application loaded, performance is perfect and no complaints.  It's just getting the thing downloaded that's the problem.

Is there some setting on the server or common IE setting that is slowing me down?  What can I tweak to try to improve performance?  I know the first question is going to be "What is the startup application doing during this time of no user input?"  The answer is "It's waiting for a button press, polling every 100ms.  Otherwise, it's waiting."  Is that too quick of a time?  Is the application thread running too fast to allow the WWW server to operate efficiently?  I would have thought that 0.1s was enough time of doing nothing to let others play nice on the processor.

Please help, the success of this application's deployment will serve as a standard for future design work...

Dan

[Elizabeth_S]

Hello,

1) Do you have many images on your front panel?

2) Are you able to run a simple VI? For example, a VI that adds two number.

3) Are you able to load faster from another computer?

Please take a look at the following webpage (Section 1):

Developing Remote Front Panel LabVIEW Applications?
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3277#toc2

[thisisnotadream]

1.)  There aren't any "images", but there are, admittedly, a lot of controls on the front panel (in a tabbed control). 

2.)  I haven't tried a smaller VI to see how it loads.

3.)  It tends to load a bit faster when I attempt to connect with my development machine, but not by much.  I went through and updated all network settings I could find to match the two computers to little avail.

I had read the document you passed along and found it very helpful.  I have implemented all the recommendations into my application (screen only updates @ 2Hz, etc.).  The problem is not when I'm running.  Once the remote panel is loaded, no problems are noted.  The issue is when the panel is loading.  It seems to lose steam:  First loading 20%, then pausing for a few seconds, then loading an additional 1%, then pausing for a few seconds, then loading another 0.2%, then pausing for a few more seconds, then loading another 0.1%, and then continuing in a long-pause-small-advance pattern until I either lose patience, the application loads, or the download stalls. 

I cannot understand why it would take the WWW server on the RT station over an hour to transmit 1.5MB of data.

Dan

[Elizabeth_S]

Hello,

Please try to connect to a simple VI.  We need to know if it is the application that is the issue or the network communication.  Thanks!

[ChSt]

Hello everybody....

I have the same Problem with connecting to an RT ETS System (Dektop PC with LV RT ETS) with an simple Connection accross a Network Switch.

When i put the Host PC and the RealTime Target into my company- network the Problem is solved. I don't know exactly why the system works in my company network with about 50 other hosts and doesn't work over a simple Switch with two hosts (RT and Host PC)...

Is it possible that there must be an WINS- Server in the network to provide a good performance???

For Information:

RT ETS Target:

IBM xSeries 206m Server
Stardom hardware RAID
512Mb RAM
3GHz Intel XEON
Intel Pro 100 network adapter
2x NI 6010 PCI cards
1 FireWire card

Switch:

Micronet SP616EA EtherFast 10/100 Mbps Switch


Company Network:

Gigabyt Ethernet using HP Procurve Switches

Nice Greetings

Christoph Stock

[Elizabeth_S]

Hi Christoph,

If the host and target are isolated from the network, you will need to give the host a static IP address.  The steps to do this can be found at the KnowledgeBase article: 

How Do I Connect to a LabVIEW Real-Time (RT) Controller with a Crossover Cable?

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/72AE8CADA1AF075686256A16005D55B1?OpenDocument

Be sure to use the same subnet for your host and target.  If you continue to have problems, please disable extra network cards and the firewall for troubleshooting purposes.  Let us know how it goes.

[thisisnotadream]

I attempted to download using applications of various sizes.  Sometimes they worked...other times they did not.  It appeared that the smaller the application, the more likely it would be able to be transmitted before something went and "broke". 

I captured a dump of the Ethernet traffic using Wireshark.  I have attached the tcpdump file of the session.  The download appeared to be going slow again, and finally stalled at "64.84% of 1150542 bytes".  I only made a cursory study of what I found, but it appears that the TCP traffic starts really going insane.  Out of order packets and missing packets and retransmissions...

While you guys chew on this, I'm going to be trying other cables and other network interfaces to see if this fixes the problem...

To Christoph, one thing that I've had to check (which I love, by the way...note the sarcasm) is in Internet Explorer.  Many companies use the Automatic Configuration ability in the LAN connections setup in internet options.  Be sure to uncheck this or IE will attempt to retrieve settings from you PXI controller, expecting it to be a server.  Your page will hang forever.  Just a thought.  However, if you are seeing the download progress bar, then you are past that point and this idea is irrelevant.

Good luck,

Dan

[ChSt]

Hello...

thank you for the very fast replies!!!

I did both months ago... I m programming this RT Software for nearly a Year now.... and it was tested in very different network constellations.
But the only network type where this System works is in an Windows Network with DHCP Server (RT with static IP) on LAN

Im also the System and Network Administrator in our Company so I would say that I know my Network and there is nothing special about it....

I also tried a Crossover Connection... with the same results... it didn't work

Maybe one of you can check if this has to do with the WINS- Server????

Nice Greetings

Chris

[Elizabeth_S]

Hi ChSt,

LabVIEW does not support any of the Windows Server editions.  You can find this information in the release notes:

LabVIEW 8.5 Release Notes
http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/371778c.pdf

[viScience]

I had a similar problem and it was related to a inherited DNS entry. I changed the DNS to 0.0.0.0 and then the remote panel stop trying to go out and find it, thus elimating the 5s timeouts that you are experiencing. Mike Sachs Intelligent Systems