SLC 5/05 Ethernet remote access

[Andrew Hardy]

Hi all
I have a legacy PLC (1747-L552C) and I have been asked to look at remote access (it's communicating via ethernet to a PVPlus6). I have an e w o n flexy VPN router and looking through the manual for that I need to add the e w o n IP address as the gateway in the channel config. of the SLC. Currently this is all 0s, will I have to stop and restart the processor after I change the gateway?


Thanks in advance

 

[ASF]

You shouldn't have to, in both cases.

That is, you shouldn't have to set the gateway address in the SLC to the IP address of the e w o n for it to work. I've got a client who carries around an e w o n Cosy whenever they go to site, and if they need support, they plug it in and I remotely connect and go online. None of these PLC's have had the gateway set to whatever IP address the e w o n is using. I'm not sure I've ever used it to get online with an SLC specifically, but I can see no reason it would be any different. Try it without setting the gateway in the SLC and see if it works.

And as to whether the SLC will need to be stopped and started - again, no, you shouldn't need to. IP settings in my experience can be changed on the fly. Sometimes I've had issues where I can't change a gateway setting because the device has an active connection, and yes, in that case it's always been a case of disconnect the device from whatever it's talking to, power cycle it, plug in directly and change the gateway, then reconnect it and let it start talking again. But that's usually with VSD's talking to a Logix PLC (or similar), and all that happens is RSLinx pops up a box and tells you that it can't do it, so there's no harm in trying. Again, haven't done a lot with networking on SLC's, so there may be gotchas with that specific line I'm not aware of, but I'd be optimistic.

 

[Andrew Hardy]

Cheers pal!


(I hoped I could rely on the hive mind!)