2009 Control System, Larger S/W Development Network...

[diviney]

Hello:

We have been working with our 2009 control system setup, attempting to integrate the FRC elements into a larger LAN. The larger LAN consists of a broadband internet connection feeding a Class C subnet through a Linksys router (WRT54G). This "Development LAN" consists of 6 desktop PC's, a couple of network capable printers, and multiple laptops depending on who happens to be present. All of these hosts reside on the typical 192.168.1.xx subnet, and this facilitates file & printer sharing, internet browsing, etc.

The 2009 controller stuff utilizes a Class A (10.xx.yy.nn) addressing scheme, and all the documentation seems geared to a single PC with a static address of 10.xx.yy.6 being used for all interactions with the FRC cRIO setup. This is extremely limiting and doesn't fit well into an existing conventional LAN configuration.

Our approach here is to attempt to generalize this by connecting the WAN port of the WRT610n router to the "Development LAN" (192.168.1.xx), and letting it route between the two subnets. We would then have a "Development LAN", and a "Robot LAN" bridged by the router. This would provide great flexibility, enabling any of the PC's to take control of the embedded hardware. Multiple programmers can each work on their piece of the software in parallel and anyone can have instant access to the robot hardware for testing. We have had some success getting the WRT610n to route between PC's on the two subnets, but we have not yet been able to successfully interact with the embedded hardware from a PC residing on the 192.168.1.xx subnet. It seems like this should be possible through a proper combination of settings in the WRT54G and the WRT610n, but we haven't yet stumbled on a working combination.

Does anyone have some thoughts as to whether this can (or cannot) be made to work?

-Thanks
Tom

[mcf747]

I was working on this before the holiday break but i was using 2 network cards with the one on what you called the "Developer Lan" and had all internet traffic routed there where all other traffic was running to the other card. What you are trying to do is ideal and what i would like to do if possible. Please keep us updated of your progression and I will work on it when I get back into our school.

Matthew Forman
MorTorq 1515

[diviney]

Matthew:

It occurred to me (at least in our case), there is nothing sacred about the broader net being 192.168.1.xx. We have complete control of both LAN's. I think I will try setting the internet side of things to 10.xx.yy.nn. If I reserve let's say the 1st 10 addresses for the static addresses within the embedded robot hardware, then hopefully everything will cooperate.

This is not quite as nice because a team may not have control over the broader LAN, but until I can solve the bigger problem it may work.

-Tom