For a number of years, the MÄK RTI has supported a useful feature called FDD (or FED if we’re talking about HLA 1.3) file distribution. The original idea was that often during federation development you might find the need to update your FDD file. This often meant going around to every machine you were using and updating the local copy of the file. Obviously, this is both tedious and error prone. With FDD file distribution, only the federate that created the federation execution needed to have a local copy. When the federation was created, the file was distributed through the RTI to the rtiexec, which then distributed it to every other joining federate. This guaranteed that everyone was using the most up to date file and there were no discrepancies. There was one obvious downside to this feature however: start-up times were slower.

Earlier this week MÄK released the latest version of the RTI, 4.1. One of the big features of this release was support for IPv6. For those that don't know much about IPv6, it is the latest version of the Internet Protocol and replaces IPv4. The primary motivating factor behind the creation of IPv6 was the size of the IP address space in IPv4. IPv4 addresses are only 32 bits long. That's enough for 4,294,967,296 different addresses, but it's not enough for the size of the internet today.

This is the 6th and final part in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. If you’re interested in learning how to make better use of your RID file, check out the previous posts in this series as well.

Part 1 – RID Consistency Checking
Part 2 – The Advantages of MTL
Part 3 – Utilize Environment Variables
Part 4 – Modularizing Your RID 
Part 5 – Programmatic Configuration 

Make sure you know what parameters your federate is actually using

Anyone who spends any time configuring RID files is bound to make a mistake from time to time. I know I do, and a large number of the questions we get in support are configuration issues as well. Even if you think you’ve setup your RID file correctly, there are some parameters that can be overridden by the RTI Assistant or programmatically by your federate code. That means examining the RID file doesn’t always tell you exactly how a federate is configured. So how can you tell? Well, there’s a RID parameter for that, of course!

This is part 4 in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. Check out the previous posts in this series, and stay tuned for more to come.

Part 1 – RID Consistency Checking 

This is part 3 in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. Check out the previous posts in this series, and stay tuned for more to come.

Part 1 – RTI RID Configuration Tips: Consistency Checking

Part 2 – RTI RID Configuration Tips: the Advantages of MTL

Lookup environment variables within your RID

If you’ve followed me through parts 1 and 2 in this series, you may have noticed a theme: managing multiple RID files is a pain. Whether it’s ensuring consistency between the various RID files involved in a single federation, or maintaining separate configurations to be used in different federations, whenever you’re managing multiple RID files you’re bound to run into the occasional hiccup. The goal of these posts is to help you reduce these hiccups and help you identify them when they occur.

This is part 2 in my series of blog posts on RTI RID configuration tips. Each of these tips, unless otherwise noted, works in HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, or HLA Evolved. Take a look at part 1 here, and stay tuned for future posts in this series.

RID files are written in Lisp

The RID file is written in MTL. MTL stands for MÄK Technologies Lisp. MTL is basically a limited form of the Lisp programming language. The primary purpose of the RID MTL file is to set specific variables which are parsed by the RTI’s MTL parser and loaded into configuration settings. The same goal could be achieved using other formats such as XML (another popular MÄK configuration file format), but there are advantages to MTL.

As anyone who has edited a RID file for the RTI can tell you, there are a lot of different parameters available to customize how you want the RTI to function. It can be pretty overwhelming. Over the years we’ve tried to make RTI configuration as simple as possible, while still preserving the ability for users to get their hands dirty with the nitty-gritty details of RTI operation. To this end we’ve tried to choose default settings that make sense, and we created the RTI Assistant to allow you to quickly and easily edit the most commonly used connection parameters from a simple GUI. Hopefully that helps many of you stay out of the RID file as much as possible, but chances are at some point you will have to take the plunge and delve into it. To help you out when that day comes, I’ll be writing a series of blog posts with tips and tricks that will hopefully come in handy. I’m not going to go through each parameter in detail. Instead I’m going to cover some general configuration techniques and tips on debugging potential RID issues. If you have a question about individual RID parameters, please see the back of the RTI Reference Manual or drop us an email at support@mak.com. Unless otherwise noted, all of the tips I’ll be discussing can be used for all HLA versions: HLA 1.3, HLA 1516-2000, and HLA Evolved.

After we completed the recent update to HLA Evolved in the MÄK RTI, we have started overhauling our sockets to support IPv6 for the 4.1 release. One of the new configuration options we added to help everyone with complex network environments is Node Configurable Compression and Bundling.

Specifically, with the current version of the MÄK RTI, you can enable packet-bundling, and or packet-compression throughout the entire exercise. For example, you can do either of the below:

I am frequently asked the question "Should I upgrade my existing HLA Federate to HLA Evolved?" I confess, I cringe when I hear this, mostly because there is no clear answer and usually the inquisitor expects such. Anyone making the decision to upgrade the version of HLA they are using needs to answer a few questions first:

Just a quick note of good news. IEEE officially released the published IEEE-1516-2010 standard today. You can now order printed copies and download the PDF from www.ieee.org. Keeping with our promise to support IEEE, MAK is pleased to also announce the release of the MAK RTI Version 4.0!