Stratix 8300 Layering

Good chance I'm just overthinking this. We have an existing CLX with a 1756-ENBT that has no slots available and was on the plant network VLAN. With a new project being installed, the integrators want to take the plant IP cable to the 8300. The 8300 will then have a plant network grace port, a local grace port, a local port going back to the existing CLX with a new IP, and also to local dummy switches going to various drives and other local equipment.

My questions:
1. Is this the best way to do this?
2. Will I still be able to go online with the processor via the plant network?
3. All the local IPs are 192.168.1.xxx. Can they somehow conflict with other local devices on the network?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I am not sure I can give a concise answer with the information you have given as I do not fully understand your current networking setup but I will give you my best from the information you provided so here it goes.

It sounds like you want a plant network that connects to everything but you want local machine control panels and their networked components to be isolated?

If you have multiple VLAN's with the same IP range that in itself is not a problem but if you set up and inter VLAN routing between them then yes you would have IP conflicts. The only way to combat this would be to have NAT in place between the VLAN and the local networks.

Have a grace port at each panel for the local network and one for the plant network if needed.

Hope that helps some.

If you can you really need to take Visio or Smart Draw or something similar and make a network drawing of what you currently have and what you are trying to do and we may be able to have a better understanding and be more helpful.

rrparker07 said:

Good chance I'm just overthinking this. We have an existing CLX with a 1756-ENBT that has no slots available and was on the plant network VLAN. With a new project being installed, the integrators want to take the plant IP cable to the 8300. The 8300 will then have a plant network grace port, a local grace port, a local port going back to the existing CLX with a new IP, and also to local dummy switches going to various drives and other local equipment.

My questions:
1. Is this the best way to do this?
2. Will I still be able to go online with the processor via the plant network?
3. All the local IPs are 192.168.1.xxx. Can they somehow conflict with other local devices on the network?

Click to expand...

The local IPs will talk on the 192.168 subnet. The PLC, since it is not on the 192 subnet, will not talk to the 192 subnet, as far as I understand such things (not much)

Since the 8300 is a layer 3 switch, you can configure the PLC port to exchange data to the IPs on the 192 subnet. But it takes some configuration (which you likely already know). Sorry - can't help with that part.

The 192 subnet is not 'routable' I think is the description. We have .. unfortunately.. multiple 192.168.1 unmanaged switches from OEMs talking to multiple 192.168.100 - 192.168.110 IP addresses locally. Our IT guys have them on Cisco switches (IE4000) which are the same family as the Stratix 8300 I think. So the Cisco does the routing between the ControlLogix PLCs and the local subnets.

If the 192 subnets are on the same VLAN they will conflict. The Cisco switches can't 'tell' the difference between them. So we have them on different VLans, split by area. Each time we add another 'skid' package with yet another 192.168.1 switch ... our IT guys 'use up' another of the VLans that they allocated for such things.

Is this the best way? I have no idea. But it works. And our IT guys ... I won't say that they are *HAPPY* but they don't complain about this nearly as much as they complain about other stuff I do