This week I was working with TrakHound’s MTConnect.NET library again, but all my test connections were failing.
I had been testing against the MTConnect Institute’s demo agent, which is now run by NIST. I opened it in my browser and got a 404 Not Found. So I went up one level and saw this…
![](https://i0.wp.com/machiningcode.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/nist-shutdown.png?resize=640%2C529&ssl=1)
Yep, the agent run by NIST is shut down due to the federal government shutdown.
Fortunately it’s pretty easy to download and install the C++ agent. There are even instructions for installing on Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi, and prebuilt Windows executables.