Ucon manager loses Lan connection.

[Rupert van Swol]

Hello Forum members,
since the last update I am having a connection problem with WDP and Ucon manager.
At startup everything is running but soon there is the "no response " message.

Since it is an IP connection I also opened the LS programmer to see if it also loses connection.
But it shows that there is an active connection.

So I also opened iTrain and ran the track via the Generator function. 
WDP was running too and the feedbacks from the Lenz RS bus via the BidiB interface to the Tams Mc2 were nicely shown in WDP.

And then the message came that the connection between WDP and the Ucon manager was lost, while the train operation in itrain over the same LS Manger continued as usual,

With a transmission brake value 0 the message "connection lost" comes in within 3 seconds.
With a value of 100 , about 2 minutes later.

In itrain the default Time out value is 2000 milliseconds.
If 100 stands for 1000 milliseconds , then this can be an indication that it is too tight.

The network of the model railway has its own ethernet port,  with a fixed IP address

Connection between the Intel Hades Intel Core i7-8809G
Kaby Lake, 4C/8T, 3.1GHz and the Netgear GS108e are provided with UTP cable cat 6
From the Netgear to the interface , Lenz/Lan , Ucon manger and the Tams Mc2 are also are provided with utp cable cat 6

The ucon network again consists of cat5e connections. Terminators are placed on the end.

Any ideas?

kind Regards

[Markus Herzog]

Hello Rupert,

First all I have to state that the code within in Win-Digipet for the µCon Manager is for 2018.2c and 2018.2d absolutely identicallay byte by byte.

The transmission brake rate of 100 means, that between each command to the µCon manager a pause of 100msec would be made. This would mean only 10 commands per seconds. This can not be the aim for the system connected with a 10 oder 100 MBps Ethernet line.

This has absolutely nothing to do with a  timeout value. The timeout value is much higher. And even if the timeout value is reached the program will retry sending the command up to 3 times. And of course no new commands will be sent within this retry time.

We had sometimes users would reported problems with such devices connected via UDP commands. Especially when they also had internet media streaming and such stuff running within their network. We also know that for example Iomega NAS system disturb the connection to such devices.
Some of these users installed an extra network card only for the µCon devices and the problem vanished completly.

And to be honest, I will not take part in discussion like "with program xy I don´t have such a transmission brake messages". I invested many hours in such researchs just to find that another program might not use the same commands as Win-Digipet or the other program just ignores lost messages and does not inform the user. Don´t get me wrong: I don´t say that iTrain might ignore such cases, but it is absolutely no indicator for me that something is wrong within WDP.

Regards
Markus

[Rupert van Swol]

Hello Markus,

Thanks for the feedback, with this background information, it seems logical to me that I will migrate the Ucon manager again to its own connection , since I have two Ethernet ports available on the Intel Hades.

Point of remark,
It is very difficult to find out as an end-user why something does not work in WDP or in other packages.
If the possibilities are exhausted, then you start comparing with another train control package. 
You are right,  that you cannot compare WDP with iTrain.
But Mercedis Benz and Audi are both cars, have an engine and at least 4 wheels.
On that basis I try to find out why it does not work.

If that will give an answer to a solution for Package A or Package B , the chance is small, but you know that with that connection to the PC , with these cables in Package B does work.

Now we have to find a (hardware based) solution where packet A and packet B will communicate with the LS manager.

What does work very well,  is the Tams mc2 BIDIB,  18 hours in full operation and no error or miss.
Well done Marcus, 

greetings,
Rupert