RSLinx Communication Problem

[ghaulk]

Hi Folks,
I have been having an ongoing problem using RSLinx to communicate to a PowerFlex 700 drive via the ethernet. I am trying to acces the drives at a remote plant and have done this before with no problems. Lately, when trying to acces the drives, I get a yellow question mark and then the big red X. Strangely, I can go online with the processors at the same location with no problem. For some reason I have lost comms with the drives. The Maint. Tech. at the site has verified that the 20COMME adapters are plugged into the switch and appears to be working properly. Does anyone have any suggestions? AB is no help. By the way, I have downloaded all the EDS files I can find, and still no help.
Thanks

 

[Myles]

are the drives in a fault mode? i dont have 700's on site but have many 70's, they have an STS LED the color of that may be an indication, also what are the LED's doing on the 20 COM E's? i have also found in the past cycling power to the drive has sorted out problems.
another problem i had on site was some drives dropping off the network due to networking issues, invalid packets sent the 20 COM E into fault mode, managed switches sorted that out.

cheers

myles

 

[ghaulk]

The drive power has been cycled several times in the last day or two due to problems we were having with the equipment. Also, the LED lights on the 20 COMM E's are on and flashing green as if they are communicating with the ethernet. I just tried to ping the drives and I got a response. That tells me that there are no network issues. I keep thinking that the problem is in RSLinx somewhere.

 

[Myles]

is RS linx on your machine or on a machine local to the drives and you have acsessed it remotley?

what RS linx driver are you using? can you post some screen shots of it?

 

[ghaulk]

The RSLinx is on my local computer. I will try and post a screenshot in a word doc. for you to view.

 

[Myles]

i dont have much experience of using RS Linx to a remote location, but have read somewhere about bandwidth problems, although that does not explain why the PLC's show and not the drives!

hopefully someone with experience of this can help you better.

one thing you could try is configuring that driver for only one of the IP Addresses, that would save on some of the comms.

good luck

cheers

myles

 

[Eddie Willers]

Your description (and screenshot) are consistent with the 20-COMM-E adapters not having a Default Gateway value configured.

Except the part where you're able to PING them.... that confuses me a little. Maybe PING all the drives, then do an "ARP /A" on your local computer at the command prompt to make sure that the IP addresses of the drives correlate with an Allen-Bradley (00:00:BC:xx:xx:xx) MAC ID value.

The IP address, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway values for the 20-COMM-E are all accessible via the HIM module on the drive. Have your technician use the "Device Select" feature to use the HIM to connect to the 20-COMM-E and inspect those values.

 

[ghaulk]

Unfortunately my Tech. went home about an hour ago. He has been up all night trying to fix some issues we had so I can't get him to verify those addresses. I don't think they have changed because I have been able to go online with them in the past. I did, however think of one other thing that could be causing my problem. Do you happen to know what the TCP or UDP (or both) port settings would be for those 20 COMME adapters? It may be that our firewall will not let the comms through. If thats the case, I can have our IT guys open those ports. Any ideas?

 

[Eddie Willers]

EtherNet/IP (the only application protocol supported by the 20-COMM-E) uses TCP Port 44818 for unscheduled communications, and UDP Port 2222 for I/O. Generally for the RSLinx "AB_ETH" driver to work across a firewall, Port 44818 needs to be open.

Your SLC-5/05 controllers, by contrast, can use either the old A-B Ethernet protocol on TCP Port 2222, or the newer EtherNet/IP protocol on TCP Port 44818.

Passing Port 2222 and blocking Port 44818 would also be consistent with your description.

 

[ghaulk]

OK. I just had our IT dept. add those port numbers in the firewall. He already had port number 2222 added, but he added them both in TCP and UDP with no results. I'm not sure I know where to look from here. If you have any other suggestions, I will certainly give it a try.

Thanks

 

[robertmee]

Have your IT dept momentarily disable the firewall. Then you'll know for sure if you're barking up the wrong tree.

 

[creativepaper]

Make sure that bootp is not enabled. I had it enabled and had a 4AM call-in when we lost power for a while. The IP address and subnet stayed the same, but the gateway went to zero.

Other problems I have with Powerflex 700 drives is with adding/removing datalinks and using RSLogix (v16), but thats another story.

 

[john paley]

Do the drives configured to talk to the PLC for control?? Is that working?? I may be alone on this one but here but we have always had better luck with IGMP(?) snooping ethernet switches. (We use Any of the N-Tron dash A models--and they work out of the box--no config necessary). Seems I read something somewhere in a white paper about PFlex drives doing a lot of broadcasting over the enet. The snooping switches do a good job of keeping that traffic away from things that don't need it.

Spend 4 or 5 hundred on a 4 channel and put it between the drive and the network.