Ethernet connections

Hi guys. Got another good one. Someone here has decided that we no longer need to talk to the PLC's in one section of our building through ethernet, and they deleted the driver from RSLinx on both our laptops. My question is this. Now that this driver is gone, I have no idea what I/P address to use when I reconfigure a new driver. Does anyone know where I can get this? Is there a way I can read this off our current network, or get a list somewhere? How do you folks deal with this situation when it arises? Thanks in advance.

Russ

More stupid questions

Ok, I got lucky and found another computer that still had the I/P addresses on them. So far so good. Now I always seem to have trouble with this. When I open RSLinx, I go to configure drivers. I select Remote Devices via Linx Gateway. I select the add new tab, which brings up the "Configure remote devices via linx gateway" window. I enter the server I/P address or host name, and click browse. I then click apply. I then go over to the Configure Browser window and add the same I/P address and apply that as well. I then click OK, thinking that I am done and that the driver should appear. It does not, however, and I have no idea where I am going wrong. Instead of adding the driver, the configure driver windows simply dissappear and no driver is added to the list. It is late in my week, and although this is not dire, it is a matter of pride now. Can anyone see a quick flaw in what I am doing here and set me straight before I go home for the week? Thanks.

Russ

Are you using a ControlLogix Gateway or an RSLinx Gateway machine to get from Ethernet to DH+ ? Unless you're using one of those, you should use the "Ethernet Devices" (AB_ETH) driver instead of the "Remote Devices via Linx Gateway" (AB_TCP) driver.

I understand that those two have been combined in RSLinx 2.40, but I'm a diehard 2.30 user and still use the AB_ETH driver.

In that driver, all you need to do is enter a list of "Node = IP" equivalents that allows RSLinx to browse individual IP addresses by assigning them a DH+ - like Node Number instead of searching around a range of IP addresses.

MAC ID sniffing

I've been faced before with a situation where nobody knew the IP addresses of the PLC's on an Ethernet, but they were up and running and we needed to configure RSLinx to talk to them.

I used a network analysis tool called LanScan to capture Ethernet traffic and sort through the hosts on the network by MAC ID (the unique hardware address of every Ethernet chipset in the world).

A-B's "Organizationally Unique Identifier" (OUI) code is 00:00:BC.

Ethernet OUI index

Any Ethernet node whose MAC ID begins with those octets has to be an Allen-Bradley controller. LanSCAN lets me look up the IP addresses that are associated with a particular hardware address (I don't know how that works and thankfully I don't have to), so I just looked up the IP addresses for each hardware identifier in that range and entered them all into my RSLinx driver.

It was definitely the hard way, but it worked !

The hard way.

Couldn't you have just uploaded the program through the DF1 port, and looked at the ethernet channel configuration that way?

And perhaps gotten the addresses of other PLCs from MSG instructions in that PLC?

Or opened up the SCADA's Node configuration (depending on the package, often in ASCII) and looked at the address of every PLC it talks to?

Or even, once you had the IP address, and the subnet mask (has anyone seen anything OTHER than 255.255.255.0 ?), ping every address within the mask? (That's not are hard as it sounds, if you write a DOS macro and use Excel as your text editor) Granted, the last wouldn't tell you which was a PLC, but it gives you addresses, and RSLinx would tell you not only which was a PLC, but the PLC 'name' as well.

Just thinking out loud. I've never been in that situation.

It was one of those "we don't know where the PLC's are, we won't let anyone to show you where they are, and you're not cleared to touch our SCADA system, kid" situations.

Screw 'em, I know how to reverse ARP. They weren't paying me, anyway.

Couple more questions

Everyone I talk to says that I should be using the Ethernet driver. My question is this, are there any clashes with talking to Panelviews with the ethernet driver. I have never tried this. For some reason though, I cannot install any new drivers on RSLinx. I have tried several different drivers, and when the screen closes, it simply will not add the driver I have selected. Is there a way to lock out this feature? So that certain bozo's can't mess around. I know that I am doing this correctly, as I have installed them on other computers without problem. I have also tried this recently(today) to make sure that I was doing it correctly and it worked beautifully. Any ideas what could be going wrong?

Allen Nelson Wore:

(has anyone seen anything OTHER than 255.255.255.0 ?),

Click to expand...

the subnet mask has to do with what class of IP address you own.

Class A = IP's from 0.X.X.X - 124.X.X.X = SUBNET 255.0.0.0
Class B = IP's from 125.0.X.X - 196.0.X.X = SUBNET 255.255.0.0
Class C = IP's from 197.0.0.x - ??? = SUBNET 255.255.255.0

I could be wrong where the IP classes start and end (somebody correct me if im wrong), its been awhile.

I didnt have time to verify the IP ranges this morning, so I managed to mess them up, but now that I got more time heres the actual list in link form


And for information on subnet masks:

http://compnetworking.about.com/library/weekly/aa043000a.htm

regards,

Steve

Try using the rslinx backup restore facility. Back up on the PC that is still configured and restore to your PC.
I have done this on our work network and stored the backup file on a network drive independant to the Programming network. Makes life easy after "crashes".

Get a port scanner like wildpacket and scan your network
for port 44818 that's the port Rslinx and most rockwell tcp/ip
communicate through

and voila!! you have all the ip address of plc or computer that is using allen bradley technologie