allscott
Member
- Join Date
- Jul 2004
- Posts
- 1,332
First the warning. PLC 5 series F revison A Ethernet processors have a problem in which if the ethernet port is flooded with traffic it can cause a memory dump and fault the controller. This can be fixed with a firmware upgrade which tech support will help you fix.
How do I know this? Hence the story.
The company I work for decided to "upgrade" 5 production lines from enhanced controllers to ethernet controllers, this decision was made before I joined the company. The purpose of the upgrade was to allow connectivity to our Lan. All of the lines now have a PLC5 ethernet controller connected to an industrial HMI running wonderware via a 3 com smart switch. The HMI's are running personal Oracle and are updating our Alpha oracle at predetermined times. 3 of the lines are 5/20's one is a 5/40, and the other is a 5/80.
The lan network in this plant is a mess. There is Cat5 strung like chicken wire everywhere. The server room consists of a window NT4.0 file server, an Alpha server, 4 old 10MBPS hubs and a WAN link to our corporate office.
On Tuesday, which I am refering to as black tuesday, we had a problem with our lan which caused a hub to start spewing bad packets across our netowrk. The PLC 5/80 and 5/40 and 1 - 5/20 responed by faulting and dumping their programs. The two other 5/20's stopped communicating with their HMI but continued running.
Now the question;
How do I protect the HMI-PLC connection in the event of a Lan problem. I knew enough when entering this project that a 3Com smart switch between the manufacturing network and business network was not enough protection. Being new at the company and not having enough network knowledge to put up a good fight, I couldn't push very hard at corporate IT for a proper solution. I knew that there were enough hard wired controls to prevent this from being a safety concern, however shutting down 2 of these lines is a big deal. It takes 12 - 16 hours to start up one of these lines and if anything goes wrong you have to start over.
From my limited knowledge of ethernet I think that I want a router to segregate the two networks, however somehow this is against company policy? IT told me that the smart switch would protect the HMI to PLC connection, I guess they were wrong costing us $$$$$$$$$. I know this issue has been discussed before but I have searched and can not find a thread that relates. As I said, I knew this wasn't a good setup but thought if anything went wrong with the lan the PLC would shut off it's Ethernet port, not dump the program.
Any advice, links, etc... on what I should do with our network would be greatly appreciated
thanks
How do I know this? Hence the story.
The company I work for decided to "upgrade" 5 production lines from enhanced controllers to ethernet controllers, this decision was made before I joined the company. The purpose of the upgrade was to allow connectivity to our Lan. All of the lines now have a PLC5 ethernet controller connected to an industrial HMI running wonderware via a 3 com smart switch. The HMI's are running personal Oracle and are updating our Alpha oracle at predetermined times. 3 of the lines are 5/20's one is a 5/40, and the other is a 5/80.
The lan network in this plant is a mess. There is Cat5 strung like chicken wire everywhere. The server room consists of a window NT4.0 file server, an Alpha server, 4 old 10MBPS hubs and a WAN link to our corporate office.
On Tuesday, which I am refering to as black tuesday, we had a problem with our lan which caused a hub to start spewing bad packets across our netowrk. The PLC 5/80 and 5/40 and 1 - 5/20 responed by faulting and dumping their programs. The two other 5/20's stopped communicating with their HMI but continued running.
Now the question;
How do I protect the HMI-PLC connection in the event of a Lan problem. I knew enough when entering this project that a 3Com smart switch between the manufacturing network and business network was not enough protection. Being new at the company and not having enough network knowledge to put up a good fight, I couldn't push very hard at corporate IT for a proper solution. I knew that there were enough hard wired controls to prevent this from being a safety concern, however shutting down 2 of these lines is a big deal. It takes 12 - 16 hours to start up one of these lines and if anything goes wrong you have to start over.
From my limited knowledge of ethernet I think that I want a router to segregate the two networks, however somehow this is against company policy? IT told me that the smart switch would protect the HMI to PLC connection, I guess they were wrong costing us $$$$$$$$$. I know this issue has been discussed before but I have searched and can not find a thread that relates. As I said, I knew this wasn't a good setup but thought if anything went wrong with the lan the PLC would shut off it's Ethernet port, not dump the program.
Any advice, links, etc... on what I should do with our network would be greatly appreciated
thanks