I have a characterization lab that has about 10-15 different tools, which is a number that is likely to grow with time to about 35-40 tools, all of which will be added to the existing rackmounts. The tools are flexibly connected with a probe station, and other defined setups used for the purpose. Some of these tools are new, and have LXI interfaces, which can in principle be used through a wired router (we are using two of these) to get a unified class C address space (192.169.30.x, x=1-255). These define an internal lab network. However, some are legacy tools like lock-in amplifiers, electrometers, etc. which do not have LXI interfaces. A single non-externally networked Windows machine hosts LabVIEW, which we plan to connect to all the tools.
I have a GPIB-USB HS interface that we are using with these legacy tools for simple measurements. Now, I could connect two different buses to our measurement computer - one for GPIB, and another to cascaded routers for the rest, and juggle VISA resources in LabVIEW at run time. However, I would like to avoid that if possible because this involves maintaining two lookup tables, and then I have to worry about the speed of the intervening interface, which can complicate coding.
For purposes of orderliness, and ability to do interesting things programmatically, I want to be able to put all my tools on the internal net in a single unified space. Can the GPIB-ENET/1000 interface do what I am thinking? Or is the user-facing interface over there GPIB centric (limiting number of tools to 31, etc.)? I have never used this interface, but want to be sure that this interface would internally map GPIB addresses to fixed IP addresses on the router, making GPIB transparent to the user (can do router configuration to statically tie addresses to each tool, just the way I am already doing), before I invest in it.