Configuring network card settings in Windows 11

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 11. If you are still using Windows 7, 8, or 10, see Configuring network card settings in Windows 7 to 10.

To view the currently available ports:

1. Open the Network Connections. One way to do this is:

   1. In the search bar next to the Windows icon, enter Network Connections.

   2. Click View network connections .
      

      

      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 (go to Intel® Ethernet Adapter Complete Driver Pack to download the latest drivers), 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, ensure the following values are selected:

   1. Click Interrupt Moderation and from the Value list, select Disabled.

      

   2. Click Interrupt Moderation Rate and from the Value list, select Off.

      

   3. Click Jumbo Packet, and from the Value list, select 9014 Bytes (ie, the maximum value):

      

   4. Click Maximum Number of RSS Queues and from the Value list, select 8 Queues.

      Warning: You can select more than eight RSS queues, however, this may cause problems.

      

   5. Click Receive Buffers and from the Value list, enter the maximum value (4096):

      

   6. Click Receive Side Scaling and from the Value list, select Enabled.

      

   7. Click Transmit Buffers and from the Value list, enter the maximum value (this is usually 16384).

      

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: To rename a port in Windows 11, follow these steps:

   1. Click on the name of the port to rename.
   2. Click Rename this connection in the toolbar above the ports.
   3. Rename the port.

   

   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.

5. Enter the next IP address as the name of the second port:

   

6. 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. Open the Ethernet settings. To do this is:

   1. In the search bar next to the Windows icon, enter Ethernet settings.

   2. Click Ethernet settings

      

2. In the IP assignment section, click Edit.

   

3. In the Edit IP settings dialog box, select Manual from the drop-down menu:

   

4. Click the IPv4 toggle to set it to On.

   

5. In the IP address field, enter the main system IP address (the name you gave to this port, for example 192.168.10.1) and in the Subnet mask field, enter the subnet mask (255.255.255.0) and click Save:

   

6. 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 Specifying 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.

Change firewall settings

If an alert similar to the following is displayed, you must change your firewall settings.

Do one of the following:

• If possible, turn off the firewall entirely.

-Or-

• If your organization's security policy does not permit this:
  1. From the Start menu, enter allow an app through windows firewall and follow the instructions.
  2. Select Change settings, and select the checkboxes for your Vicon software to be allowed for Private and Public domains.
     If your Vicon software isn't listed, select Allow another app and navigate to the relvevant exe file in C:\Program Files\Vicon\<ViconProductName>.

-Or-

• If you don't have the necessary permissions to make these changes, contact your IT/IS department to obtain access.

Disable or stop anti-virus software

If you are still experiencing network issues, check whether or not any other anti-virus software is enabled that may scan the card traffic.

Disable or stop this from scanning the cards used for the Vicon system.

Troubleshooting

• No video data and gray camera icons
• Unable to use standard IP addresses

No video data and gray camera icons

On starting your Vicon software, you may find that although the cameras appear to be fully controlled, video data is not displayed and the camera icons are gray. This indicates that the cameras are connected to the network but are not contributing data, which can be caused by jumbo packets being disabled in the NIC or switch.

To resolve issues with non-contributing cameras:

1. Check that jumbo packets are enabled (see Step 4c in Configure advanced adapter settings).
2. Make sure that your network switch is not blocking them.
   For information on setting up your switch correctly, see Configuring switch settings.

Unable to use standard IP addresses

Usually, the system IP address is set to 192.168.10.1 (see Assign an IP address to a port). If you need to use a different system IP address, for example, to avoid a network conflict, set the IP address as described in Assign an IP address to a port, but specify the required IP address instead of 192.168.10.1. Ensure the last octet of your IP address is from 1 to 9, for example, 10.0.0.1.

The standard system IP address (192.168.10.1) is used by your Vicon application software's executable file (*.exe) and by the shortcut that is automatically created when your Vicon software is installed or updated. To ensure your Vicon software uses the new IP address that you have set, you can:

• Change the properties of the desktop shortcut for your Vicon application to specify the changed IP address.
• Run your Vicon application software from the command line, enabling you to specify the IP address that it uses.

For more information, see Specifying the IP address for your Vicon software.