Tips on How to Find the IP Address Assigned to Your Ethernet Adapter

Refer to the figure below. On a Windows machine open a command window and type “ipconfig -all”. If you are using a Linux machine we assume you already know how to set up networks.

The program will output the status of all the attached Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth adapters. We are only interested in the adapters that are attached and on an Ethernet network.

Note the adapter called “USB for DVL”. In the network properties windows I assigned it this name when I set up the adapter and its address (the default name was something like “Realtek USB Adapter”).

The IP address assigned to this adapter is 192.168.2.5 (this is the PC’s IP address, not the DVL’s IP address). In binary this looks like 11000000.10101000.00000010.00000101.The subnet mask is 255.255.252.0. In binary, this looks like 11111111.11111111.11111100.00000000. For IP addresses to be on the same subnet, anywhere there is a binary “1” in the subnet mask, the corresponding bits in the IP addresses must match. Note: if you follow the Blue Robotics directions, your PC’s address on the ROV network should be 192.168.2.2. This means my PC’s “USB for DVL” adapter and a properly-configured Blue Robotics PC are on the same subnet, and if the DVL is on its default fallback address of 192.168.2.3 it’s also on the same subnet, and if a BlueROV is assigned its default address of 192.168.2.1, it’s on the same subnet as well.

Note that the PC office network IP address is 10.0.3.108, and the office network subnet mask is 255.255.248.0. If all the devices mentioned in the previous paragraph were moved to my office network without changing any addresses, the PC could not talk to the DVL et al., nor vice versa (except for broadcast messages, which are generally sent by a PC to all its adapters, and received by all stations on a network).

Bottom line: if you are using fallback or static addresses, you want to be sure the DVL is connected to a PC Ethernet interface on the proper subnet.

If the DVL receives its address using DHCP, then the DVL address should already be on the proper subnet to talk to a PC, but may need to use a broadcast address to reach a Blue Robotics PC or ROV.

The “ping” command can be used to establish if a DVL is connected and is on a reachable subnet. The following figures show examples of the “ping” command. Linux machines have a “ping” command that works the same as the Windows “ping” for our purposes.

Using Windows Command Prompt to find Adapter IP Addresses

This ping command used the address assigned to the DVL by the DHCP process. The DVL address was found using the Blue Robotics Ping360 Ethernet discovery protocol. The ping was successful.

This ping command used the DVL static address 192.168.2.3 assigned by the user. The DVL address was found using the Blue Robotics Ping360 Ethernet discovery protocol. Even though the DVL is on the network and is successfully sending and receiving broadcast packets, the ping was unsuccessful because the domain gateway server is telling the PC the network is not reachable. Moving the DVL to a different Ethernet adapter with a static address on the same subnet as the DVL might fix this.