ccent and plc

jgbart

I'm a electrician that sometimes connect networks to PLCs. I'm learning more about networks value in a factory setting and it's influence on PLC. the PLCs are both Allen Bradly and Siemens products. Can anyone who has experience it this advise me in a direction that I can go. I Know there are several methods that use to commutate through and with each but having a hard time figuring out where to start. I have a Siemen step 7 and going to get a Allen Bradly PLC along with, maybe, 2 routers and a switch. does this make sense? John

jabney

i can't offer much or any assistance but welcome to the forum!
I'm sure one or many of our fellow members will get you pointed in the right direction

gc8dc95

I know the situation. I was an electrician for 6 years before moving to IT and spent most of my time working with PLC's and network setups. I used primarily Modicon and AB, but I think the basics are all the same. The question is how far are you looking to take this?

Typically, PLC connections have several redundancies and focus on quickest path to the destination, especially for sensitive processes. For example, we usually had a couple CAT 6, fiber, and coax connections to each PLC processing unit for redundancy and these networks were isolated on different switches and vlans for failover.

I would add another switch, that way you can configure and watch STP to get a good grasp on that as well.

jgbart

Thanks, will be adding another switch.