Link Connect Manual
Copyright 2016 NetLinkz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form or by any means without the written permission of NetLinkz as provided by the explicit terms and conditions of our license agreement. Basic Rights of Use Thank you for choosing NetLinkz. For more information visit us at http://www.netlinkz.com. Trademarks Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and Vista are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other brand and product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders. Statement of Conditions To ensure proper operational function and/or reliability of the product is maintained, NetLinkz reserves the right to make changes to the product described within this document, via electronic means or otherwise, without notice. NetLinkz does not assume any liability that may occur due to the use, or application of, the product described herein.
Table of Contents Link Connect Manual... 1 Table of Contents... 3 Introduction... 4 System Requirements... 4 Getting Started... 4 Windows...5 Macintosh... Error! Bookmark not defined. Linux... 15 Using Link Connect... 16 Joining a Link Network... 16 Enable / Disable Links... 17 Quitting Link Connect... 18 Advanced... 19 Network View... 19 System Tray... 19 Detailed View... 20 Filtering and Sorting... 21
Introduction Link Connect allows connections between network services, devices and peers. This manual will explain how to setup and manage your networks through Link Connect. For more information on Creating networks or other administration, please refer to the Platform Manual. System Requirements Supported Operating Systems Mac OS X 10.10, 10.11, 10.12, Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012 R2 System Requirements 150 MB of hard drive space 4GB of RAM Install Requirements Administrator access is required Getting Started Download the appropriate Link Connect Installation package from the NetLinkz downloads page and launch the installer. 4
Windows You may see Windows SmartScreen or UAC warnings when attempting to install. If you encounter a SmartScreen warning as shown below you will need to click More Info followed by Run Anyway. If you encounter a UAC warning you will need to click Yes. When you are presented with the welcome screen, click Next. You will be asked to install NetLinkz Link Core and NetLinkz Link Connect, which are bundled products., 5
Click Next on the NetLinkz Core Setup welcome page. Read the End User Licence Agreement. When ready, click I accept the agreement and then click Next to continue with the installation. 6
If you are reinstalling the application, or upgrading your software you may see the following screen, simply click Next and it will shut down the service while it reinstalls. You should now enter the number of adapters to create. Usually this will be the same as the number of networks you want on the device. If you re unsure simply click Next as the software will create devices as you need them. 7
Click Finish and it will show you the Netlinkz LinkConnect installation. Click Next on the welcome screen. 8
Read the End User Licence Agreement. When ready, click I accept the agreement and then click Next to continue with the installation. Choose the install location, if you want to change it, and then click Next. 9
Select where the setup wizard will create the Link Connect shortcut and then click Next. Verify that all locations are correct before clicking Install. When you see this screen the installation is finished, click Finish 10
Launch the software from the shortcut in the start menu. After you have launched the software you should see the following icon in your system tray. Right click the icon to use the Link Connect software. 11
Apple OS X Launch the package to begin the setup. Click Continue when the setup screen appears. Read the End User Licence Agreement. When ready, click Continue. 12
Then click Agree followed by Install at the next screen. 13
When prompted for Username and Password enter the credentials for your system and click Install Software. Once the installation is complete open the Link Connect software via launchpad. It will show up in the top right of your screen. 14
Linux When installing on a Redhat based linux system you can use the rpm (or yum, dnf) command to perform installation. If you have previously installed a version of linkcore you may want to uninstall it first, using rpm e linkcore. To install linkcore, use the command rpm i linkcore-<version number>.rpm. This will install to the path /opt/netlinkz. On linux systems that use systemd, the rpm will install the Link software as a service automatically. There is also a SysV compatible service script inside /opt/netlinkz/peer/linkcore for reference if your system still uses init. On linux, there is no Link Connect GUI tool provided, and thus to enrol the device in a network you must use the command line tool invitation-deploy. This is packaged inside the rpm and will be located in /opt/netlinkz/peer/invitation-deploy. Pass the invitation URL as a parameter to the program../invitation-deploy https://10.22.5.41/api/invite/czbzvmmbq If everything goes well you should see an output similar to the above, where the data tag shows that the device has been successfully enrolled. 15
Using Link Connect The Link Connect software is run entirely from the system tray. You may quit any windows that pop-up and the software will still be running in the background. In this section we will give an overview of the features of this software. Joining a Link Network To join a new network you will need to be given an invitation link by your Link Platform administrator. Once you have this link, click the Link Connect icon and left click Join a LINK Network. You will then be presented with a dialog to copy and paste this link into. Copy and paste the link you were given into this box then click Ok. The dialog will hide, and a notification will appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. On OS X this will be shown in the top right hand corner, but will show very similar text in the message. 16
If you see a message similar to below, there was an error enrolling your computer and you should contact your administrator. Enable / Disable Links Once you have enrolled in one or more networks you may find that you want to disable these networks temporarily. In the Link Connect software you can either disable or enable all the networks, you cannot disable an individual network. To Disable the networks click Disable Link. Note that you will require service control privelidge on your computer to actually disable the networks. You may be prompted by UAC to allow Microsoft Windows Based Script Host to run. You must click Yes on this dialog to allow our software to disable the link. You may also see warning as you shut down the link, this is to warn you when the link is unavailable. If you have just disabled the link you may ignore this message. Once disabled you will now see you can Enable LINK from the taskbar. 17
Quitting Link Connect When you wish to quit Link Connect you may do it from the task menu. Bare in mind that when quitting Link Connect, this will not shut down the link service. If you wish to disable the Link service and also quit Link Connect, then choose Disable Link before Quit. 18
Advanced Network View System Tray Once you have been enrolled in one or more networks there are several views to work out which networks you are currently connected to, and the other computers that are on these networks. Start by right clicking the Link Connect icon and hovering over Networks. A list will appear that shows the list of networks currently connected. In the screenshot shown, the computer is connected to a network called MyNetwork1. If the computer had enrolled in multiple networks we would expect to see multiple entries in this list. To get a detailed view of the members of this network we click Detailed View. 19
Detailed View Each item in this list is a node on the network MyNetwork1. On the left is the list of computers on the network, and the right shows detail about the selected node. You may select any item in this list and it will give you certain details around the selected computer. This is information that is necessarily specific to the Link Network, but may help a system administrator diagnose problems in the network. The most interesting fields here are: Name This is the name of the computer that you have selected. Domain Internal VIN Address Peer Association Last Seen This is the name of the network. This is the IP address you would use to access the computer across the Link Network. There are three possibilities: Direct means you have a peer to peer connection to the remote computer. Indirect means you have an indirect connection to the computer, and all the data must be sent via the Link Platform Broker. Local means that it s details about your own computer. This indicates when the remote computer was last seen by your computer. If you last saw it Now then you can likely try connecting to it. 20
Filtering and Sorting You can filter or sort this list if you have too many computers on a network or are looking for a specific computer. Specify the filter by clicking the filter drop down list. You may also filter by node name by searching in this field. Simply type into the filter the name or a subset of the name you want, and then press enter. 21