Which Ethenet Port?

[Gary Rubin]

Hi all,

I've never done much with Ethernet communication in my LabVIEW code, so this may be trivial... Here's what I'm looking to do:

We have a system which is crunching numbers and generating results. This system has 3 ethernet ports. During normal operation, it will be using one of those ports to transmit data (via TCP/IP, I think) to a consumer of the data. I don't think there'll be an ethernet hub, at least not one that we'll have access to. What I've just described ought to be pretty straightforward.

Here's where it gets tricky, at least in my mind: I'd also like to have the ability to walk up to the system with a laptop, plug a CAT-5 cable into one of the other ethernet ports, and start receiving the same transmitted data that's going over the TCP/IP. I was thinking of doing this one as UDP, however, so I don't have to worry about the system monitoring whether that laptop is connected or not.

I guess my big question is whether port numbers are tied to the physical ports on the computer? In otherwords, do I need to assign my TCP/IP connection to Local Area Connection 1, and my UDP to Local Area Connection 2?

Thanks,

Gary

Figured it out.

Gary

[ned]

The LabVIEW help says that you can assign a port to a specific network card, but you are not required to do so. If you do not, it will listen on all available interfaces. Take a look at the help for TCP Create Listener and UDP Open, specifically the "net address" terminal.