IO Remote Rack connected to Two 1756 Controlllers

Hello,
If I may ask for help please, in our existing system we have 4 remote IO Racks in a ControlNet Network (with a 1756-L63 Controller). We are upgrading the system but trying to use some of the existing Cards/Modules on those Remote IO Racks. So we are planning to install a new Rack with 1756-L73 Controller, we will be using EtherNet for this new connection and will be using some of the IO Cards/Modules on those existing IO Racks. So in one remote IO Rack 4 of the AI Cards will be connected to the 1756-L63 (through ControlNet) and 5 of the other AI cards will be connected to the new 1756-L73 (through EtherNet), same as the other DI/DO Cards will be dividing them some will be to the controlnet and some will be on the Ethernet.


Please let me know if this will be possible?
Thanks in advance,

https://www.rockwellautomation.com/...tion/control-systems-configuration-tools.html

If you go onto the Rockwell website and look for the Product Selection Toolbox, download and install, then you can start building up your configuration from there. That may tell you what you want to know about what you are proposing.

This could prove very frustrating to try to troubleshoot. But from a technical perspective, it depends on the existing system. Many systems can only accept one communications module. Other systems can have multiple modules. The ones that support multiple modules would do what you are trying to do. Of course, the others would not.

If you can provide more details on the hardware used for the remote racks, we can give you a better response.

OG

I think it will work as long as you configure your IO three correctly. IO that should be on ControlNet will be assigned to ControlNet bridge and IO that should be on Ethernet will be assigned to Ethernet bridge in the IO tree.

for example you have 17 slot rack

slot 1 is your ControlNet bridge, slots 2-7 ControlNet IO

slot 8 is your Ethernet bridge, slots 9-17 Ethernet IO.

I share OG's concerns that there might be some configuration conflicts or support details if the hardware is very old.

In general, you can have multiple network bridge modules in a 1756 chassis, providing network connections to different controllers for a mix of I/O modules. You can even share those connections to an extent, with "Listen Only" connections.

The principal concern I would have is if the ControlNet module has a "Rack Optimization" connection to all of the discrete I/O modules in the chassis, rather than direct "Module Connections" to each of them. That might conflict with the Ethernet module's ability to create a similar connection.

If both network bridge modules are set up for individual "Module" direct connections to each I/O module, then the setup you describe should work.

But of course you're going to want to document and label all of the I/O modules very clearly, since multiple controllers sharing control of an I/O rack is an unusual architecture.