My computer where I work on sequences and test my controllers is connected to my home network.
When I run xLights, to drive my lights it causes my network to become bogged down with multicast traffic.
I've tried to adjust the firewall rules on my other PCs to drop the incoming multicast traffic, but it hasn't worked -- those affected PCs have difficulty even moving the mouse despite having 1Gbps NICs. Lets call my home network 192.168.1.*
So... I thought I'd create a separate network 192.168.0.* that my by xLights machine would ALSO connect to... 2 NICs, 2 sets of switches, etc.
I found that the xLights multicast traffic would not go over the new network. I restarted xLights, and that was not enough.
When I configured my xLights network, I hoped that I could direct multicast traffic to a specific network. I couldn't. I think this might be a good option to add.
I found that the old network still worked. The new network did not.
I experimented and found that if I disabled the old network, then started xLights, then xLights would now send multicast over the new network. I found if I reenabled the old network, then the new network continued to work and the old network did not.
So, I believe xLights is finding the first active NIC and sending multicast traffic ONLY over that NIC.
I think a more correct solution would be for xLights to send traffic over ALL NICs if you aren't going to ask. Obviously, this would defeat my goal of NOT sending multicast over my home network.
So... I found a workaround for my problem:
1) disable any NICs where multicast should not be sent. enable the SINGLE NIC which should be used for multicast
2) start xLights and verify the test program works
3) reenable any NICs you want for other purposes.
Here is my suggestion for an xLights improvement:
1) Setup enumerates ALL available NICs/interfaces in the system, physical, wifi, virtual, etc.
2) Setup allows you to select any combination of interfaces for multicast transmission
3) Test, Nutcracker, Preview, and programs all use the selected list of interfaces for doing multicast transmission. (I suppose it might require retransmitting multicast multiple times -- once for each interface... but that is a problem borne by the user... if you want multiple NICs, then make your setup small enough that there is no lag on your particular computer.)
While this will allow multiple networks to be used -- more importantly it allows you to specify the RIGHT network to use... not the first.
