Allen Bradley 1769-AENTR SCADA question

Hello everyone,
I am in the beta phase of building a SCADA system. Currently planning to use Inductive Automation as our SCADA platform, but that's beside the point....

My question for the forum is this: I have an Allen Bradley CompactLogix L33ER that is running a control system. It is currently working on a 10.56.5.xxx IP schema. My network admins have built a VLAN system that works on the 10.72.245.xxx schema, so I'm considering buying a 1769-AENTR for switching between the two. Does anyone know if it is possible to configure the two network ports on the AENTR to work with the distinctly different IP addresses (10.56.5.xxx for the control system and 10.72.245.xxx for the network access)?

I want to make sure whatever I purchase will work in the application, as it's not a particularly cheap item.

Thanks!

Welcome to the PLCTalk forum community, and it's good that you asked before buying !

The 1769-AENTR is an I/O adapter with an embedded 2-port Ethernet switch that supports the Rockwell "Device Level Ring" (DLR) protocol. It has only one IP address.

It does not connect to the 1769 bus of a 1769-L33ER controller to give the controller more Ethernet ports; instead, it is the leftmost module in an assembly of remotely-located 1769 I/O modules.

There are CompactLogix controllers that do give you the option of having one IP Address and DLR support, or two separate IP addresses. But those are the modern Bulletin 5069-xxx series, AKA the "CompactLogix 5380" family. They 1769-L33ER is a member of the previous "CompactLogix 5370" generation.

Instead, the appropriate device to connect your control system to the new VLAN without changing its address is an ordinary "Network Address Translation" (NAT) appliance, which is a small, simplified router.

A-B sells a couple that work well in this sort of application, or there may be NAT features in the managed switches and routers that your network admins are managing to connect the control system to the enterprise network.

Thanks so much for your reply, Ken.
I will look into a NAT, as that would be the simplest option for our purposes. While it is possible to change every IP address in my control system, I would far rather use something like a NAT and leave the control system(s) unchanged.
Thanks again for answer!

Ken Roach said:

A-B sells a couple that work well in this sort of application, or there may be NAT features in the managed switches and routers that your network admins are managing to connect the control system to the enterprise network.

Click to expand...

Wow. How do they get away with charging that much for a functionality that could be replaced by a Raspberry PI?

Or am I missing what the actual NAT functionality is?

Or is this another case of "You can do it better, but you can't do it more expensively?"

I am frequently tempted to grab a $25 FriendlyARM pocket router and try to get it set up to do similar stuff, but am reminded that I'll get the midnight call from the factory if it fails.

I did buy a DIN-rail mounted, 24V powered, eMMC-equipped computer based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, to go along with my pile of ordinary Pi's. It was on eBay and looks like a private labeled version of the Kunbus Revolution Pi Core, so when it arrives in the mail this week we'll see how it works !

Just FYI, the 5380 series PLC DOES have 2 ports with the ability to have different subnets.

Wait, Ken already said that.

It sounds to me that your IT team doesn't really know what they're working with / doing if they're having you purchase hardware for what you're trying to accomplish. If they're able to spin up VLANs dedicated to the SCADA application, they should be able to handle routing between your existing IP on the PLC and the server on which your Ignition resides.

I would communicate to them your current layout on the plant floor and have them figure out how to make the link between the PLC and the server that contains Ignition. You shouldn't need to purchase hardware, although it's possible as others have described above.