This page describes the Ethernet IP address and assigning it on the
ViewStation.
In addition to a unique Ethernet hardware address,
each device on a network has a logical address, called the Internet
Protocol address, or IP address, which must be unique for its own
network. The IP address is assigned by the system administrator
according to your particular network configuration and conventions.
These assignments are done in an orderly way to avoid duplication of an
address, but also to group addresses into network subdivisions, or to
conform to national and international addressing conventions for
wide-area communications, and so on.
These addresses and their forms are important because they are
used to control access to network broadcasts, or netmasks, or access to
network gateway hosts.
An IP address is in the form nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn, with each field
ranging between 0 and 255; a typical address would be: 128.91.6.11.
Usually the first two number groups represent a unique address in the
general network and the last two number groups apply to local networks
and individual units. For systems using the Remote Configuration
option, the filename for each unit is usually given as the hexadecimal
representation of the IP address.
Thus the remote
configuration filename might be:
IP address:
128.91.6.11 Configuration filename: 805B060B
The IP addresses are usually given to the other devices on the
network with a communication technique called ARP, or Address
Resolution Protocol. This is a message by the ViewStation to all
devices on the network which requests, "Match my hardware address with
my IP address." All the devices on the network register these two
addresses for the ViewStation so they know what device is communicating
and where it can be found. This requires that the ViewStation
information and assigned address be entered in the network's ARP data
base, which must be done by the system administrator (most systems do
this automatically whenever a new device is connected to the network).
Assigning an IP Address for the ViewStation
The IP
(Internet Protocol) address allows all devices on the network to
communicate with the ViewStation and vice versa. If your network is
simple, you just have to enter the ViewStation address. If the network
is more complex, including connections to other networks, you must also
set the network mask and the gateway address fields also (these are
discussed in the Setup Mode Ethernet
Communications Menu where this data is entered).
In the
simplest case, you enter the IP address number assigned to your
ViewStation in Setup Mode (in the HDSware menu) and don't change it
after that.
In another case, you can use the BOOTP Protocol or the RARP Protocol
utilities to determine the IP address from the network (if those
services are available on your network). These network-based
addressing techniques allow the IP address (and other Setup Mode
entries) to be modified by the system administrator remotely without
having to change the addresses on each device.
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