N2K, Furuno, MaxSea

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Yes, the master should give you an IP address.

No, NavNet will not work through a router. You must bridge or switch it.

The best way to tackle this is a packet sniffer. Last time I did that was with FreeBSD, I wouldn't even know if a Mac comes with one and am pretty sure Windows does not.

cheers,
Nick.

If you push CTRL & MENU at the same time, it'll put you into a 'Service Man' menu. The first tab is a Network menu that allows one to set a 'default gateway'. I've seen it, never played with it. But it stands to reason since it's there, it may actually do something. One can dream that setting the default gateway on the Master may also pass this parameter to DHCP clients and wa-la Navnet3D now works over a router. But, we've already determined that MSTZ can't see the radar due to some trick that Parallels is pulling with mac address & IP address. There is a very slight chance that the Master handles (repeats) radar traffic to other network entities. AND, the Master populates his arp cache via his DHCP server. This would create the symptoms we saw with Parallels. The whole point to this tirade, Navnet3D just may work over a router.

Give it a try!

Disclaimer: if you blow up your system, I'm not responsible!!!! (but I'll drink a beer in sympathy for you! )

[twistedtree]

I'll try again tomorrow.

Problem #1 is that I'm not picking up a DHCP address, however I found a comment on the Furuno support forum saying that the NN3D DHCP doesn't work with certain network adapters under Windows 7. Maybe this is impacting my Mac too. I also found a document that tells what address to manually set the Mac to, so I'll try that next.

I also found a reference saying that the Master is always 172.31.100.254 which is what Nick observed. That gives me something to ping to confirm basic connectivity.

Problem #2 is to see if MaxSea can talk to NN3D under VMWare Fusion betternthan it does under Parallels. I also discovered that I was running an old version of MaxSea, and was doing the wrong thing in an attempt to command it to discover the NN3D devices. I'll try doing it the right way once I confirm connectivity.

[s/v Jedi]

Here's how to do a packet trace if you're willing to take it there:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3994

Macs rule.. unix under the hood

I'm gonna play with those secret menu's a bit...

cheers,
Nick.

[twistedtree]

I made some good progress today, and gather some good info about NN3D's network configuration.

The punch-line is that I got MaxSea working under VMWare Fusion on my macbook, and talking to NavNet. This is a big breakthrough (at least to me) because it allows one to run native Mac apps alongside MaxSea. The trick, as DotDun suggested, is to set the networking for VMWare to Bridging mode. That way it picks up an address directly from the network right along side OSX. For some reason, the Mac still can't get a DHCP address from the Master MFD, so I set that one up manually. But once that was done WinXP got a DHCP address with not trouble from the MFD.

With the XP virtual machine on the same area as NN3D, MaxSea was now able to pickup my position and other instrument data off the ethernet. This is great news for me because it means I don't have to struggle through trying to get a Windows machine put together and running MaxSea. I tried that today taking a freshly configured XP Pro laptop with 1G of memory and plenty of disk space, spending a couple of hours installing .NET and SQL and all the other per-requisite bloat, rebooting three times along the way, then finally installing MaxSea. All that only to find that MaxSea wouldn't launch in Navigation mode. It's complaining about needing more memory, and I was dreading the hours, or more likely days it would take to upgrade all the drivers and try typical windows random experiments until I find a combination that happens to work. Dodged that bullet.

Along the way I learned a little more about how NavNet configures the IP network.

As Nick discovered, the Master MFD takes 172.31.100.254

My laptop was assigned 172.31.254.7

I did a quick count and sure enough there are 6 other NavNet devices on my network in addition to the Master MFD (3 more MFDs, BBWX2, FA50, and DFF1). I pinged .1 through .6 and got responses from all except .3. I'm not sure why that one didn't respond, as I think all get powered on together, but I'm saving that little mystery for another day.

[s/v Jedi]

WHAT ??!! Network adapter of virtual machine in bridge mode??!!!.... start Parallels... search menu's... select bridge mode... new Ethernet interface appears in Windows 7... check properties.... NEW IP ADDRESS !!

Okay, start MaxSea... license withdrawn... out of licenses... remove license from other laptop... complains about manually doing this later.... check web... Home down.... wait an hour.... maxsea up again... activate it... WORKS!! IT WORKS!!! EVEN RADAR WORKS!!!!



So, it doesn't matter which of the two popular VM programs used, when you choose bridged networking it works with both. I have the latest v7.0 Parallels by the way.

My only problem right now is that my Wifi goes down when my radar comes on. Will have to do some grounding and extra shielding I think.

We have good progress. I have found this secret menu on the Furuno MFD. I also found out more options of MaxSea, like it's radar workspace... wow... I can even toggle options like interference rejection etc. and it all actually works.

ciao!
Nick.

[s/v Jedi]

Twisted, instead of just pinging, you should be able to open a web browser to the weather fax, right? Maybe even the AIS will come back with something.

cheers,
Nick.

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

WHAT ??!! Network adapter of virtual machine in bridge mode??!!!.... start Parallels... search menu's... select bridge mode... new Ethernet interface appears in Windows 7... check properties.... NEW IP ADDRESS !!

Okay, start MaxSea... license withdrawn... out of licenses... remove license from other laptop... complains about manually doing this later.... check web... Home down.... wait an hour.... maxsea up again... activate it... WORKS!! IT WORKS!!! EVEN RADAR WORKS!!!!

Glad it's working!

I thought you had tried the bridged network option a while back and it still didn't work.

So now it appears that all communication at layer 3 and up....???

Did you try it across a router??? (setting the default gateway in the 'service man' menu)

[s/v Jedi]

Just for fun... here's how MaxSea appears completely wireless on my iPad using SplashTop remote desktop app. MaxSea itself runs on a MacMini with OSX Lion, Parallels and Windows 7 Professional VM. Sensor data incl. the AIS targets on the picture come over Wifi or Ethernet (Apple Time Machine actually).

I'm starting to like this

ciao!
Nick.

[twistedtree]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Twisted, instead of just pinging, you should be able to open a web browser to the weather fax, right? Maybe even the AIS will come back with something.

cheers,
Nick.

Yes, good idea. The AIS definitely has a web interface, but I don't know about weather. From your comment it sounds like it does.

Does your Mac get a DHCP address correctly from the MFD? Mine doesn't and that's the next thing I'd like to solve. After I assign a fixed IP to the Mac, the guest OS (Win XP) is able to get a DHCP address, just not the host OS. It's very odd.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by DotDun

Glad it's working!

I thought you had tried the bridged network option a while back and it still didn't work.

So now it appears that all communication at layer 3 and up....???

Did you try it across a router??? (setting the default gateway in the 'service man' menu)

No, I must have missed that about the adapter in bridged mode... but it completely makes sense of course. And I thought I was smart with bridging by spanning some Ethernet interfaces in my MikroTik router... I don't understand why I didn't find that myself the first time I tried it

At the moment I can't try it across my router because all ports are in use. I have 3 ports in a bridged (switched even) config because I don't have the Furuno hub and the industrial DC powered switch has not arrived yet. I just found that service menu on the MFD but it looks like the default gateway and everything else is greyed out. That must be because it's a slave. To be honest... I didn't even look what IP address is in there but it should already be my router of course !! Checking now... no, it's all zeroes and not allowed to edit. May be if it's a master, but that's for another day

ciao!
Nick.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by twistedtree

Yes, good idea. The AIS definitely has a web interface, but I don't know about weather. From your comment it sounds like it does.

Does your Mac get a DHCP address correctly from the MFD? Mine doesn't and that's the next thing I'd like to solve. After I assign a fixed IP to the Mac, the guest OS (Win XP) is able to get a DHCP address, just not the host OS. It's very odd.

Yes, the weather fax has a full web interface I think.

All devices on my network currently get their IP config from a DHCP server running on my MikroTik router, so also the MFD and the radar scanner. This is the device:

It's only $125.- and I can recommend it. It even provides hotspot login for our boat-wifi haha

I will soon start with the MFD as master and the MikroTik as backup DHCP in case the MFD is switched off. We'll find out what's happening with this, I can dream DHCP.

cheers,
Nick.

[twistedtree]

Originally Posted by DotDun

Did you try it across a router??? (setting the default gateway in the 'service man' menu)

It will be real interesting to see if this works, but my guess would be that the radar, ais, N2K, and other data gets sent via mac layer Multicast and won't pass through a router. Otherwise wouldn't every "talker" have to send to every "listener"? That's a lot of replicated data being sent on the network. These networks are inherently small, but it still grows geometrically. I'd certainly lean towards multicast if I were doing it.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by twistedtree

It will be real interesting to see if this works, but my guess would be that the radar, ais, N2K, and other data gets sent via mac layer Multicast and won't pass through a router. Otherwise wouldn't every "talker" have to send to every "listener"? That's a lot of replicated data being sent on the network. These networks are inherently small, but it still grows geometrically. I'd certainly lean towards multicast if I were doing it.

Except that I can route multicast traffic... peanuts I can even route broadcast packets by using a helper address. No, the only way to stop me is by simply ignoring that gateway address... which I think they do, I read something like that a while ago.

cheers,
Nick.

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by twistedtree

It will be real interesting to see if this works, but my guess would be that the radar, ais, N2K, and other data gets sent via mac layer Multicast and won't pass through a router. Otherwise wouldn't every "talker" have to send to every "listener"? That's a lot of replicated data being sent on the network. These networks are inherently small, but it still grows geometrically. I'd certainly lean towards multicast if I were doing it.

Does Windows CE support multicast????

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by DotDun

Does Windows CE support multicast????

Yes according to Google... but I don't think it'll be anything else than plain old unicast IP, probably UDP.

cheers,
Nick.