Dual ethernet ports should have identical features

[Mads]

Dual network interfaces is often part of the requirements for redundancy, however in such cases it is also very common to specify that the behaviour of borth of these should be identical. You see it in subsea control systems where they have an "A" and "B" channel, you see it topside where the device might need to be on two networks etc.

Unfortunately this is not the case for any of the dual port RT targets from NI. The secondary port is really a second class NIC. It has limited configuration options. It does not support DHCP, you cannot specify a gateway for it - and the code to do programmatic changes to its configuration is not easily available.

Please make the two ports fully interchangable. Port 1 or 2? It should not really matter which one you use.

[Texas_Diaz]

We wholeheartedly agree!  

The loss of parity has been in large part due to the inability of the network stack within the OS we use to provide such facilities.  We now have an active RT project to rip out the guts of the network subsystem, replace them with a more "modern" version, and roll out a new infrastructure that does in fact support multiple network devices in an interchangeable manner.  This is one of those, "easier said than done" kinds of projects, so I could not comment on when it will be available within RT - I can only comment on the fact that, "We're actually actively working on it."  

We're also looking into the ability to provide programmatic configuration changes, but that will probably take a back seat to making sure everything else works correctly.  There will most likely be something available internally (maybe it wouldn't be ready for "prime time"), but you can most likely get info on how to access it via our support.

-Danny

[Mads]

Sounds great. Looking forward to it

[kmcdevitt]

How many ethernet ports does LabVIEW RT support.  If I put in several cards (such as PXI-8231, PXI-8232, or PXIe-8234) into a PXI chassis, then would I be able to configure and use them all?

[Mads]

- Danny, I know you said that yu could not comment on the availability of dual ports with identical functionality...but that was "ages" ago , any news on this? We run into this issue a lot and it is very close to a show stopper when dealing with systems that require redundancy. The lack of DHCP is something we currently can live with as long as we can programmatically set the IP of the secondary interface, but the fact that it is limited to local communication only (no gateway settings) is really bad for us.

[MGiacomet]

Yes! What is taking so long to make the second port able to actually do some useful work?

Also, it that's too hard, how about making LabVIEW configurable (it's NI's own code, isn't? So you can't blame the OS) so we can run in debug mode on port #2, if it is too hard to make port #2 accept DHCP and gateway settings?