Configuring network card settings

The following sections describe how to set up a network card in a Vicon system and may also help with troubleshooting connection issues:

View the network ports

The network ports and advanced network settings may not be visible until you install the network card driver. (Note that these instructions assume that you are using Windows 10, which is the Windows platform currently recommended by Vicon. If you are still using Windows 7, the Intel I340 is used in place of the Intel X550, X540, or I350.)

To view the currently available ports:

1. Open the Network Connections.
   One way to do this is to click the Network and Sharing Center icon on the right of the Windows toolbar  and then click Network & Internet settings and in the Status window click Change adapter options.
   
   
   
   If Windows has not automatically installed the drivers, only the onboard (LAN) network port is visible:
   
   
   
   
2. If you can't see the other ports, install the relevant Intel Ethernet Server Adapter driver (PROWinx64 for 64-bit Windows; or PROWinx86 for 32-bit Windows), accepting all the default settings.
   The other ports are now visible:
   
   

Configure advanced adapter settings

After you have downloaded and installed the required drivers, and made the network ports visible in Windows, ensure the Advanced Adapter Settings are configured correctly.

To change the advanced adapter settings:

1. Open the Network Connections window.
2. Right-click on the first network port and click Properties.
3. In the Properties dialog box, click Configure and then click on the Advanced tab.
4. In the Property list (or for an I340, the Settings list), ensure the following values are selected:
   1. Click Interrupt Moderation and in the Value list, click Disabled.
      
       
      
      
   2. Click Interrupt Moderation Rate and in the Value list, select Off.
      (If you're using an I340, to find the Interrupt Moderation Rate, Receive Buffers and Transmit Buffers settings, click Performance Options and then click Properties.)
      
      
      
      
   3. Click Jumbo Packet, and in the Value list, select 9014 Bytes (ie, the maximum value):
      
       
      
      
   4. Click Maximum Number of RSS Queues and in the Value list, select the maximum value.
      
       
      
      
   5. Click Receive Buffers and in the Value list, select the maximum value (4096):
      
      
      
      
   6. Click Receive Side Scaling and in the Value list, select Enabled.
      
      
      
      
   7. Click Transmit Buffers and in the Value list, select the maximum value.
      
      
      
      

5. Click OK to accept changes and exit.
   
   

6. Repeat the procedure for the other network ports.

Identify and name ports

To make it easy to identify the network ports, name them with the IP addresses that you will assign to them.

To identify and name ports:

1. To see the currently available ports, open Network Connections (for a reminder of how to do this, see View the network ports).
2. To identify the ports, begin by plugging a live network cable into a port and note its position (for simplicity, it may be easiest to choose the port on the far right or the far left).

3. Rename the identified port with the IP address you will assign to it:
   
   

    Tip
   For Vicon video cameras, if your Vicon system already uses 192.168.10.1, use the next address (192.168.10.2) for the network card instead of 192.168.10.1 shown above. Number the remaining ports consecutively (that is, 192.168.10.3, 192.168.10.4 and 192.168.10.5).

   For a table that lists commonly used IP addresses for Vicon systems, see Standard Vicon system IP addresses.

4. Move the network cable to the next port. Network Connections displays a red X to indicate that the unplugged port is now not connected, and a new one becomes connected. Enter the next IP address as the name of the second port:
   
   
   
   

5. Repeat for all the ports.

Assign an IP address to a port

To assign the correct IP addresses to the ports, modify their network settings.

To change the settings on the ports:

1. Start with the first port that you named in the previous section. In Network Connections, right-click on the port and then click Properties.
2. In the Properties dialog box, on the Networking tab, clear all the unwanted items, leaving only Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) selected:
   
    
   
   

3. Click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and then click Properties.

4. In the Properties dialog box, select Use the following IP address and in the IP address box, enter the main system IP address (the name you gave to this port, for example 192.168.10.1) and subnet mask (255.255.255.0) and click OK:
   
    
   
   

5. Click OK to close the Internet Protocol Version 4 Properties dialog box and then click Close to close the network port Properties dialog box and save the settings.
   
   

   Important
   Ensure you click OK to close the Internet Protocol Version 4 Properties dialog box and Close to save and exit the network port Properties dialog box, otherwise your changes to the IP addresses are not permanently saved.

   
   

   Repeat from step 1 of Assign an IP address to a port for the other network ports.

Standard Vicon system IP addresses

The following table shows IP addresses that are commonly used in current Vicon systems (for 10G network cards):

For older Vicon system configurations that use i340 or i350 network cards, you may have additional ports that can be used for Vicon video cameras:

If you can't use the standard IP addresses (for example, because you're having to avoid a network conflict), see Specify the IP address for your Vicon software.

Check firewall and anti-virus software

After you start your Vicon software, ensure that it is not blocked by a firewall and that it shows that the system is live.

Troubleshooting