RSLinx router/firewall connection failure

Ok, I'm not the engineer. I'm the IT guy. I'm trying make it so an outside vendor can communicate with the PLC inside our network for upgrades and maintenance.

I've opened up TCP/UDP ports 2222 and 44818. Turned port forwarding on at the router for those ports. We are testing it by trying to get connected to the PLC from outside our network but we're unsuccessful. It's nothing fancy just a liksys setup. It isn't a permanent setup, it's merely "hey computer guy, hook up the plc to the dsl" and that's it, it doesn't stay hooked up to the net. I can get connected to other applications through our router, just not the plc.

Can someone else point me in the right direction to enable/disable etc, or what to look at? I've read Rockwell's docs and according to them, I got the right information for our hardware, just, no connection.

Thanks again.

PLC Gateway and Subnet

Have the PLC Engineer check the Ethernet channel configuration.

Make sure that the Gateway and Subnet Mask have been configured for the channel.

I'll have him check that but I forgot to mention that he can get into the plc when he's plugged into the network, it's when we are outside of the router.

Sorry, that's kind of an important piece of info there. My bad. But I'll have him look at that.

That's a very common oversight on the controller side, lizard.

If your controller has an IP address and a subnet mask, but an incorrect or blank Default Gateway value, it will be able to communicate on the local IP network but not through your router to the remote IP network.

Since you mentioned ports 2222 and 44818, I know you're using a Rockwell Automation controller and probably using RSLinx Classic software.

There are two Ethernet drivers in RSLinx Classic. The "Ethernet Devices" driver allows you to enter IP addresses into a table of controllers you want to communicate with.

The "EtherNet/IP" driver uses a broadcast message to find Rockwell controllers on the local subnet. That message will not go through a router.

Fortunately all devices supported by the "EtherNet/IP" driver are also supported by the extra-labor-step "Ethernet Devices" driver.

Exactly Ken. If the gateway is not configured, the PLC has a heck of a hard time, if any, getting outside its local network.

We're still having issues with this. The module configuration property tab is greyed out. We can't configure a default gateway and such.

I'm not sure where to look to try to enable it to manually enter the ip information.

Is this something configured in RSLinx or if it's configured with RS5000?