Ping Interface to the pi system

Ping
Interface to the PI System

Version 1.6.0.0
Rev A

How to Contact Us

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Reference Manuals 1

Supported Features 2

Diagram of Hardware Connection 4

Principles of Operation 5

Bandwidth and Network Traffic Issues 5

Resolution Limits 5

Topology Issues 5

Installation Checklist 7

Interface Installation on Windows 9

Naming Conventions and Requirements 9

Interface Directories 10

PIHOME Directory Tree 10

Interface Installation Directory 10

Interface Installation Procedure 10

Installing the Interface as a Windows Service 10

Installing Interface Service with PI ICU 10

Installing Interface Service Manually 15

Digital States 17

PointSource 19

PI Point Configuration 21

Point Attributes 21

Tag 21

PointSource 21

PointType 21

Location1 22

Location2 22

Location3 22

Location4 23

Location5 23

InstrumentTag 23

ExDesc 24

Scan 26

Shutdown 26

Performance Point Configuration 27

Configuring Performance Points with PI ICU (Windows) 27

Configuring Performance Points Manually 28

I/O Rate Point Configuration 29

Monitoring I/O Rates on the Interface Node 29

Configuring I/O Rate Tags with PI ICU (Windows) 29

Configuring I/O Rate Tags Manually 30

Configuration on the PI Server 31

Configuration on the Interface Node 31

Startup Command File 33

Configuring the Interface with PI ICU 33

Manual Maintenance of the Startup Command File 34

Command-line Parameters 35

Sample PIPing.bat File 38

Interface Node Clock 39

Security 41

Windows 41

Starting / Stopping the Interface on Windows 43

Starting the Interface as a Service 43

Stopping the Interface Running as a Service 43

Buffering 45

Configuring Buffering with PI ICU (Windows) 45

Configuring Buffering Manually 48

Example piclient.ini File 49

Appendix A:
Error and Informational Messages 51

Message Logs 51

Messages 51

Location5 51

Bad Input 52

System Errors and PI Errors 52

Revision History 55

Introduction

OSIsoft’s PI-Ping Interface program determines the latency of a TCP/IP network. In particular, PI-Ping measures the response times of ICMP echo messages (i.e., “pings”) that it sends to a remote machine. Accordingly, this program can help the user in diagnosing network connection problems between machines residing in a TCP/IP network.

PI-Ping comes in two versions: a regular (full) version and a limited version known as PI-Ping Basic. The latter has the following limitations:

• 
  it gets data for up to 32 PI points,
  
• 
  only one copy of the program may be running at a time,
  
• 
  it runs only on a machine that is also running the PI Server version 3.3 or higher, and
  
• 
  it sends data only to this PI Server machine
  

PI-Ping Basic is installed as part of PI Server v3.3 and higher.

The filename of PI-Ping Basic is piping_basic.exe. The filename of the regular version of PI-Ping is PIPing.exe.

The following table summarizes the differences between the regular and basic versions of PI-Ping.

	PI-Ping	PI-Ping Basic
Maximum point count	Unlimited	32
Availability	Available for purchase	Installed as part of PI Server 3.3 and higher
Can run on a PI Interface node	Yes	No
Must run on a PI Server node	No	Yes
Must send data to the PI Server node on which it runs	No	Yes
Number of copies that can run simultaneously	Unlimited	1
Filename	PIPing.exe	PIPing_basic.exe

PI-Ping runs on a Microsoft Windows NT version 4.0 SP6, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 2003 Server computers. Unless otherwise noted, the remainder of this document uses the term “Windows” to refer to all these platforms.

PI-Ping does not require any special hardware. A standard network interface card on the Windows machine is sufficient.