Managed Switch's

robw53

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Join Date
Nov 2009
Location
south yorks
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515
i am looking into intergrating 4 pieces of machinery over ethernet and just looking for some advice/tips as to anything i need to setup/configure or if its neccessary to have a managed switch.

3 mixers each having a L35E and PV+1250 each mixer is interlinked with each other

and a flour delivery system with an L35E with seperate ethernet cable's to each of the 3 mixers, at the moment it has 1xPV300, 2xVFD's and 1xFlex I/O with 3 modules all on devicenet but im swapping them shortly to ethernet and replacing the PV with a PV+1000

from the flour system i will be Producing 3 UDT's and these will be consumed 1 for each mixer and each PV+ 1250 on each mixer will be looking directly at the flour system for a handful of tags per mixer

as it stands i will not need to be producing from the mixers to the flour system but it could be something that may be needed at a later date.
 
I would not want I/O traffic to be able to propagate onto any part of the network where those millions of packets don't need to go. Sometimes, this can be a local "dumb" switch, other times, a managed switch with IGMP snooping enabled and a single IGMP querier on the network is required. Also, (not done this myself) the newest version of Logix5000 allow for I/O traffic to be handled with uni-cast packets, alleviating the requirement for managed switches.

Then, there's the PV+. It might not be as critical as I/O but an HMI on Ethernet will generate a lot of traffic too.

If you keep the network local to each machine and connect to the rest of your network through a properly configured managed switch, then the local stuff can be unmanaged. When I say local stuff, I mean local to each machine. You don't want them all to have to 'see' all of each others' HMI and I/O traffic all the time, so I would advise managed switch ports for connecting each of the separate stations together for communication.

Bear in mind, I still consider myself a beginner with Ethernet and Logix5000, so my advice should weigh less in your mind than some of the true experts on the subject.
 
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At this moment I'm doing a job inside the security world (CCTV) and there the advice is:

VLAN (managed witch)

or yet better

a seperate network.

Why a seperate network:

to avoid problems with the ICT-people,
to avoid security problems,
and to keep a performant network for the not CCTV-side of the firm.

I think the first 2 arguments are something to keep in mind also for you.

Regards,

Ivo
 
would it be preferable to instead of each mixer HMI looking directly at the flour system PLC for the silo weights etc creating another UDT sent from the flour system to each mixer or even a message?

is there any good documents for ethernet networks and limitation and good practices when selecting switch's managed or unmanaged
 
The way we did it at my previous job was had 3 separate networks connected together with 1756-EN2T cards. one network for for P2P traffic (PLC -> PLC and RIO) connected with Stratix switches, one was for FactoryTalk SE ,connected with Stratix switches, and one the plant network connect via our regular IT department switches. This way you could access the processors through RSLinx for programming and troubleshooting, but you could not Ping from one network to another.

All our CompactLogix units were the L4x series with the extra EthernetIP card. Our OEM equipment all used their own local networks and then we would connect them to our P2P network using the 2nd card.

At least that's the way i remember it being set up, i could be a little bit fuzzy on the details.
 
unfortunatly i am not able to do this as these are 1769-L35E processors using the onboard ethernet.

anyone else have any good advice on this?
 
I think a network diagram is in order. Just show each Ethernet device as a rectangle, each Ethernet cable as a line, and a description of "what needs to talk to what". Put some dashed rectangles (or polygons) to surround stuff that belongs to each station or machine section. Maybe show the Ethernet cables as solid or black lines connected to each device and show the traffic as dashed lines with arrows along side the whole path between devices.

I think a visual aid like that will go a long way toward identifying what you need.
 
You will need a managed switch. Depending on the firmware multicast may be your only choice. I think unicast became a option in V18 and the default in V19 I am going on memory here.

Be careful with those L32's as I think you only have 16 connections on those ports.

Download and make use of the ethernet Ip capacity tool here http://www.rockwellautomation.com/solutions/integratedarchitecture/resources3.html

Plug in your devices and make your network and you can see where you stand on connections.

With the hardware you listed I would not dream of doing it without a managed switch.

I have used N-Tron, Hirshman and the staratix. I like the stratix 8000 and 8300 myself but they can be pricey.
 
here is a diagram of the layout i am working with, if any more info is needed let me know please

Rob

i mentioned in the first message i would have 2 inverters and another hmi and flex I/O on ethernet local to the flour system at the moment these are on devicenet but will be looking to swap over to ethernet at a later date, these will not need to share info with the mixers

these processors are running version 19
 
I've tried running the Ethernet tool on 2 pc's and they both don't let me run it, it opens and within a few seconds says it experiences problems and shuts down
One is running 7 and the other vista
 
Make sure your download is not corrupted and try to reinstall. I run this tool on 7 and vista 32 and 64 bit with no issues. I use it all the time.

Make sure you have admin rights on 7. That may be your issue.
 
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Rob

Unless you have all three machine on isolated networks with quite a few ebbt modules then you will have to make them all 1 network or use VLAN's both of which require a managed switch.

If you want 3 different VLAN's (Networks) then you will need a layer 3 switch. Most managed switches are layer 2 the stratix 8300 by AB / Cisco is a layer 3. Hirschman has some layer 3 also not sure about N-Tron.

FYI and just a tip

Be very careful with produced /consumed tags using the hardware that you have listed as each produced / consumed tag will eat a connection for each one. So if you do use produce consume the use a UDT. I myself like using a message instruction instead depending on the amount of data and consuming devices (more than 1)
 
i was just going to create 1 UDT from the flour system which i believe uses 2 connections and then consume by each mixer so thats one connection for each mixer.

a question, does it reduce traffic by using the UDT i have to send data to the mixers instead of the mixer HMI's looking directly at a tag in the flour system?

would i be able to use a stratix 6000 it doesnt have layer 3 but does have IGMP snooping

maybe i could look at using messages instead if it would be better than produce/consume

Rob
 

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