Understanding Network Load

You should consider optimizing iFIX to reduce network traffic when your network configuration contains slow links. Slow links are communication links with speeds between 2400bps to 128Kbps. In networks where the slowest link is greater than 256Kbps, the iFIX network load is generally low enough that it does not need to be optimized.

Understanding network messaging is important when planning for network load over a wide area network or other network configurations that contain slow links. To understand network messaging, let's review iFIX architecture.

iFIX uses a client-server model for peer-to-peer communication to share data and alarms in real-time between nodes on a network. For data access, you can consider a iClient node to be a client and a SCADA node to be a server.

All iFIX network conversations are based on transactions. The iClient sends a request to a SCADA server. After the SCADA server acts on the request, it sends a response to the iClient. Network messages are either requests or responses.

The maximum length for a message sent by iFIX to the network interface is 16 kilobytes. One 16 kilobyte message sent by iFIX may be represented on the wire by multiple network packets. The network transport itself also sends network packets for managing the communications between the two nodes and to ensure network messages arrive without errors.

 

See Also

Important Notice

You do not have the latest version of iFIX! You are missing out on the newest capabilities and enhanced security.

For information on all the latest features, see the iFIX product page.

For more information on upgrades, contact your GE Digital sales agent or e-mail [email protected].

For the most up-to-date documentation, go here.