Industrial Network Setup Help

[Breadman]

Hi All
I would like to join our plant network to another workshop 'office' network (where i program).
I'm not very clued up on the network side of things and as such im asking for your help.
If i want to join 2 networks together i would need a router right?
This way on the plant side of the network i can keep my IP addresses 192.168.1.XXX and on the office side i can have a DHCP allocate an address to programming PC's of 192.168.0.XXX?
I use just unmanaged switches at the moment but my worry is someone in the office plugging into the wrong place with the same IP address as a PLC in the plant and shutting the plant down through PLC fault.
If this is right. Would a router such as the R2000 for Robustel be able to do this? This router can then also give me remote access through VPN too?
Are there any other routers you would recommend?
Many thanks

 

[Vlad Romanov]

Hi All
I would like to join our plant network to another workshop 'office' network (where i program).
I'm not very clued up on the network side of things and as such im asking for your help.
If i want to join 2 networks together i would need a router right?
This way on the plant side of the network i can keep my IP addresses 192.168.1.XXX and on the office side i can have a DHCP allocate an address to programming PC's of 192.168.0.XXX?
I use just unmanaged switches at the moment but my worry is someone in the office plugging into the wrong place with the same IP address as a PLC in the plant and shutting the plant down through PLC fault.
If this is right. Would a router such as the R2000 for Robustel be able to do this? This router can then also give me remote access through VPN too?
Are there any other routers you would recommend?
Many thanks

Hey Breadman,

To do what you've described, you need to setup VLAN routing between the two networks. I'm not familiar with the switch you have linked, but this is a feature that is common on many Cisco switches as well as certain Stratix models.

As far as DHCP of IP addresses for programming PCs goes, I typically would not do it that way (although it is possible). I'd just allocate a fixed number of addresses that can be used for programming; one would be assigned to each tecnician / engineer. Once you create the VLAN, you can allow only that set of IPs to communicate over the router. This would prevent any packets from your office network from getting across.

Hope that helps somewhat...
Vlad

 

[kallileo]

You can use a router to join the two networks.
I did something similar recently on small plant by using a cheap but powerful Mikrotik router.
The WAN port of the router is connected to office network and is setup to receive IP by DHCP from the office main router.
The LAN port(s) can be used to connect to unmanaged switch on plan side.
Then you have to setup NAT/port-forwarding rules on the router to access devices on the plant side.
You can probably do the same using your router.