MicroLogix 1100 Ethernet Comms

Good Morning All

I have a small project with 7 Micrologix 1100's. One of these acts a Master and collects data from the remaining 7 via Ethernet Messaging. Currently we are only testing with the Master and a single Slave. If I enable Message instructions to all 7 PLC's (even though only 1 actually exists) my comms times blows out. I suspect that what is happening is that every scan (in the Master) I am requesting 7 MSG's with only 4 buffers available the remaining 3 are placed in a queue and over time (because of the speed at which I am trying read) I "choke" the Ethernet Port.
I was thinking that instead of "reading" data from all 7 Slave PLC's that I set them up to read/write data to the Master but I dont know what effect this extra traffic will have. I don't have access to the other 7 PLC's so I cant test. Is this "bottleneck" just a limitation of the 1100 PLC MSG System ? Or Will I see similar time blow-outs if I set up all 7 to Write data to the Master ?
Anyone out there have any idea's on how I can speed up my comms ?

7 Micrologix 1100's

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=7

One of these acts a Master and collects data from the remaining 7

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=8
how fast do you need to go?

1 Master and 7 Slaves. I need approx. 0.5 seconds from Input detected at Master to Output triggered at Slave. Typically not all Slaves will need to be triggered at the same time but I will need to poll all the slaves all the time.

I did something similar the other day, I use RTC on the master and I set a msg every second to gather info from the others ML1100. Though I do not know how fast you need info from the other plcs.

Thanks widelto,
Normally I would like to Poll the other PLC's about once a second but during certain times, when the Master has to write data to the Slaves then I need approx. 1/2 second response.