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marty-hills avatar image
marty-hills asked

Raymarine Victron App - Can I connect via a network switch?

Hi All,


I am connecting to our new quarto 8kw inverter/charger to our Raymarine Axiom MFD. We have the RayNet connector plugged into the MFD, however the question is can we plug the Raynet cable from the Raymarine into a network switch, then an ethernet cable from the GX colour controller into the same network?


I would like to be able to continue the using the Victron online app and have it run through the Raymarine MFD's if possible.


Thanks,


Martin

raymarine
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3 Answers
kris avatar image
kris answered ยท

Such a connection as from Simrad will not work with Raymarine. I checked personally.

Also applies to Garmin, connection only via MDF ports.

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Justin Cook avatar image Justin Cook โ™ฆโ™ฆ commented ยท

@Kris, I'm afraid whoever you spoke to at Raymarine was misinformed, this is known to work in the real world.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) answered ยท

Hi all,


as in the manual (https://www.victronenergy.com/live/venus-os:mfd-raymarine ), the Raymarine features a built-in DHCP server. Making it impossible to connect the Raymarine, and the GX Device, together into a router.

A switch would be possible, but then make sure to understand that switch and router is not the same.

To connect the GX Device to the Raymarine over ethernet, as well as connect the GX Device to the internet, the only solution that I know of is to use WiFi for the internet connection.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image mvader (Victron Energy) โ™ฆโ™ฆ commented ยท

ps, thinking about it a bit more, there might be a way, but I recommend to only try this if you really know your way around advanced settings in internet routers & ip addressing & understand what a default gateway is. My suggestion above, connecting the GX Device to the internet using WiFi is much simpler.

So here is the more difficult option, which maybe works (I haven't tested it):

1. check in what address range the Raymarine distributes IP addresses.

2. go into your router, disable the DHCP server, and change the LAN ip address + subnet and so forth settings to an address in that same subnet as the Raymarine is distributing in.

3. on the GX Device: change it to manual ip addressing, pick another address in the same space the Raymarine uses, set a subnet, and set the default gateway to the ip address that you picked for the router. DNS servers: also the ip address of your router.

That should work. But don't forget my warnings - and in case you can't figure it out, then I'm sorry but can't help.

Lastly, read this too:

http://forum.raymarine.com/printthread.php?tid=5735

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thomassv avatar image
thomassv answered ยท

Hi. Lifting this again as I see that now Raymarine Lighthouse 3.14 has an option to toggle off DHCP, at least in my 2 Axiom setu. Has anybody tested to connect the cerbo to the HS switch after disabling DHCP

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centerisl avatar image centerisl commented ยท

@thomassv Have you tried disabling the Axiom DHCP? I just looked at the Lighthouse 3.16 docs and they only say "Enable and disable the MFDโ€™s DHCP server " - nothing else. I ran into this issue in another context - IP cameras - and we had a long thread in the comments of a Panbo boast "https://panbo.com/broad-ip-camera-support-a-raymarine-advantage/" and Ben Stein worked around this by installing a PC to bridge the networks with two NICs:

"The PC that is recording sits on two networks with two separate network adapters. I maintain separate networks for each MFD brand on the boat, plus a boat network. The boat network uses 192.168.101.0/24 addressing while the Raymarine network is, as you noted, a 10.x.x.x address space. Iโ€™ve removed the default routes for the Raymarine network adapter on the PC so that only next hop traffic is sent on that adapter."

I have a Cerbo GX and a boat network (Cerbo connected RJ45) that is independent of my Raymarine network (3 MFDs / Radar / Transducer with a HS5) network. I could absolutely go WiFi for Cerbo to Internet...but I'm also out of ports on the HS5. If moving to my router's DHCP will work and I can combine the networks...that would be sweet.

As I recall Raymarine fought this vigorously and went with their own subnet because they didn't want to deal with the support issues if the radar would no longer connect to the display.

So...I suppose it's possible to turn that setting off...use the boat's router...and if for some reason that router roached then you'd have to change the setting back (on every MFD?), likely reboot, and potentially reboot the radar to fall back. And probably unplug the bridge cable to the HS5.

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centerisl avatar image centerisl centerisl commented ยท

Looks like the DHCP toggle was added in v3.15.62 "Guadeloupe" in August 2021:

New Features:

  • ...Addition of 4G router support (DHCP On/Off switch) and setup page (from AXIOM diagnostics)...
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centerisl avatar image centerisl centerisl commented ยท
BTW, this worked a peach for me - I unplugged the Cerbo cable from my boat router and plugged it into the RM HS5 (with the RM adapter) and my MFDs detected it and displayed an (outdated but still helpful) message about changing a setting in the Cerbo. Changed that and it appeared on all my Axioms. The HTML screen is what is shown in the docs, and there's a corner menu option duplicate the setup that I can do from the Touch50.


Side note: the Cerbo's built in wifi isn't _quite_ strong enough to reliably reach the boat's wifi access point - it seems to sync up every day rather than every few minutes when cabled. I ordered the small Nano USB which I hope will resolve that.

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centerisl avatar image centerisl centerisl commented ยท

And...the Raymarine DHCP toggle does NOT work as expected. I turned that off, bridged the networks, and my Axioms did NOT get boat IP addresses. I sent an email to Raymarine support and received this - hugely disappointing - response (emphasis added):

"The ability of your data master Axiom to turn off its DHCP functions/ responsibilities that was added in v3.15 software for the network is not what the simple DHCP On/Off slider would lead someone to believe looking at in the settings menu. You can turn off the DHCP on the Axiom in your network (really only applicable to the data master in a multi Axiom system), however, that isn't to give up DHCP responsibilities across the board. It will only cede DHCP responsibilities for the network and accept an IP address from one of our new RayMarine Yacht Sense SmartLink routers installed on the same network. As we have not even starting shipping those yet, there is no chance that you have one of our SmartLink routers. We will not take an IP address from a third party router, and currently have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future.

Brian Gifford
Product Support
Raymarine"

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