A protocol for controlling devices over a network-a new VXIbus draft specification

This paper describes the TCP/IP Instrument Protocol Specification and its companion document, the TCP/IP-VXIbus Interface Specification. These documents are draft VXIbus Consortium specifications which define a protocol for connecting VXIbus instrumentation to a TCP/IP computer network. These specifications begin to fill the need for standard ways to connect instrumentation to computer networks. This paper describes the objectives of the specifications, gives a brief LAN primer to assist in understanding the technology, and describes both the network instrument protocol and the LAN-to-VXI mapping to be implemented within TCP/IP-VXIbus Interface Devices.