©NationalInstruments Corporation 6-1 GPIB-ENET/100for Mac OS
6
Using Your GPIB-ENET/100and NI-488.2
This chapter lists some general programming requirements and describes
howto use the following various options available with the
GPIB-ENET/100 and NI-488.2 for Mac OS:
•DynamicHost Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
•Configuration Reset (CFG RESET) switch
•Firmwareu pdate utility
•InteractiveControl utility

Using DHCP

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is designed for large
networks in which networking devices are transient and network
parameterscannot be statically assigned and thus tied to specific devices.
DHCPeases the addition of networking d evices onto a network by having
aserver assign necessary network parameters, including the IP address,the
netmask, and router information, to a newly attached network device.
Optionally, if the device provides a hostname with the configuration
request, DHCP may attempt to configure your network to recognize
the devicew ith the requestedhostname.
DHCP requires a Domain Name Server (DNS) to associate the numerical
IPaddress assigned with the requested hostname. Within the past few years,
anInternet community standard has emerged to provide a standardized way
for these services to provide dynamic domain name services. Using this
standard,after DHCP assigns the numerical IP address, it can communicate
with DNSto register the newly assigned IP address with the requested
hostname. However,the complexity of DHCP and dynamic name
registrationtypically requires active management by a corporate MIS
department, or equivalent,because of several risks for failure.
One possible failure can occur if the pool of availableaddresses co ntains
no more unassigned IP addresses. This problem is evident if DHCP fails
towork and the PWR/RDY LED continues to flicker for longer th an