Not possible to ping controllers from engineering station when two systems are connected to the smae control netwok
Hi Stefan,
We have two systems connected to the same control network as follows: (seperate system networks)
1- Old system SV 5.1 FP4 Rev.D via connectivity servers
2- New system SV 6.0.3-2 connected via new RNRP Routers.
When the two systems connected to the same control networks
- Not possible to ping controllers from old engineering station but possible from connectivity servers (controllers are showing up from engineering and connectivity on the old RNRP monitor), see attachment
- Possible to ping controllers from the new engineering station in the new system as normal.
When disconnect the new RNRP routers from the control network, I was able to ping the controllers from the old engineering stations.
Some practical data:
1- We have not changed the IP addresses in the new system (same system IP as the old one) but we did change domain name in the new system, therefore we have the same network area name for both systems.
2- Tries trace route from old engineering station and it seems ping stopped at the old connectivity server, see attached snip
3- IGMP is disabled on network switches/RNRP routers.
4-We are running parallel operation for a short period of time (some hours)
I would apprtiate your suggestions to overcome the issue....
We have two systems connected to the same control network as follows: (seperate system networks)
1- Old system SV 5.1 FP4 Rev.D via connectivity servers
2- New system SV 6.0.3-2 connected via new RNRP Routers.
When the two systems connected to the same control networks
- Not possible to ping controllers from old engineering station but possible from connectivity servers (controllers are showing up from engineering and connectivity on the old RNRP monitor), see attachment
- Possible to ping controllers from the new engineering station in the new system as normal.
When disconnect the new RNRP routers from the control network, I was able to ping the controllers from the old engineering stations.
Some practical data:
1- We have not changed the IP addresses in the new system (same system IP as the old one) but we did change domain name in the new system, therefore we have the same network area name for both systems.
2- Tries trace route from old engineering station and it seems ping stopped at the old connectivity server, see attached snip
3- IGMP is disabled on network switches/RNRP routers.
4-We are running parallel operation for a short period of time (some hours)
I would apprtiate your suggestions to overcome the issue....
Voted best answer
We have not changed the IP addresses in the new system (same system IP as the old one) >> this is likely what is hurting you.
From the view of the controllers on areas 17 and 18, there can only be one remote area 16, if the above is true, you have configured Area 16 twice - this is not going to work well...
If you pull the IPv4 routing table from one of the controllers (Control Builder M>Tools>Remote System>Controller Analysis>More>Network Information>Get) you will likely discover that the routing entry for area 16 (172.16.64.0/22) is held by the new NE870... so a ping from the old client/server network is returned to the new client/server network.
Rule of thumb: never reuse the same RNRP Area number in a system.
The problem can be a bit random due to the individual order of arrival of RNRP Router announcements (multicasted by router nodes to all local peers every 1 1/2 second ).
From the view of the controllers on areas 17 and 18, there can only be one remote area 16, if the above is true, you have configured Area 16 twice - this is not going to work well...
If you pull the IPv4 routing table from one of the controllers (Control Builder M>Tools>Remote System>Controller Analysis>More>Network Information>Get) you will likely discover that the routing entry for area 16 (172.16.64.0/22) is held by the new NE870... so a ping from the old client/server network is returned to the new client/server network.
Rule of thumb: never reuse the same RNRP Area number in a system.
The problem can be a bit random due to the individual order of arrival of RNRP Router announcements (multicasted by router nodes to all local peers every 1 1/2 second ).
Answers
> 1- We have not changed the IP addresses in the new system (same system IP as the old one)
This is a really BAD idea. You can break all sorts of things. It is ESSENTIAL that the two systems cannot see any traffic from the other system. At a minimum you should not use the same IP address on the control network side of the Connectivity servers. On the Plant Network you should run the systems on physically separate networks if possible.
Generally I'd suggest that you assign new IP addresses whenever you run a system upgrade.
>4-We are running parallel operation for a short period of time (some hours)
Yes you can do this. But. It's unsupported, and if the Controllers give up and die, then its on you. Be extremely careful about what Application is running in the AC800M controllers. The two systems will both talk to the controllers and subscribe data as long as the data matches in both systems. If there are updates to the application caused by the upgrade to Version 6, then data may not show correctly.
Note that there is a limit to the number of OPC Servers that can connect to a controller - typically only 2. So if both the version 5.1 and version 6 systems have redundant OPC servers then they can't both connect at the same time. You can increase this limit, but you have to download the changed application to the controller.
You may also be able to connect the version 6 Connectivity servers to the Version 5.1 OPC Server by adjusting the service groups setup.
This is a really BAD idea. You can break all sorts of things. It is ESSENTIAL that the two systems cannot see any traffic from the other system. At a minimum you should not use the same IP address on the control network side of the Connectivity servers. On the Plant Network you should run the systems on physically separate networks if possible.
Generally I'd suggest that you assign new IP addresses whenever you run a system upgrade.
>4-We are running parallel operation for a short period of time (some hours)
Yes you can do this. But. It's unsupported, and if the Controllers give up and die, then its on you. Be extremely careful about what Application is running in the AC800M controllers. The two systems will both talk to the controllers and subscribe data as long as the data matches in both systems. If there are updates to the application caused by the upgrade to Version 6, then data may not show correctly.
Note that there is a limit to the number of OPC Servers that can connect to a controller - typically only 2. So if both the version 5.1 and version 6 systems have redundant OPC servers then they can't both connect at the same time. You can increase this limit, but you have to download the changed application to the controller.
You may also be able to connect the version 6 Connectivity servers to the Version 5.1 OPC Server by adjusting the service groups setup.
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