13.2. EtherNet Industrial Protocol

EtherNet/IP™ was developed by Rockwell Automation in late 1990, and handed over to ODVA in 2001 which is now an open industrial protocol.

EtherNet/IP only works over TCP/IP, as such the port must be configured with IP address. Two parameters that need to be configured on device are Routing & Controller Slot .

The tag data type must be matched with the PLC according to the following table.

PLC data type

SCADA data type

BOOL

boolean

SINT

int8

INT

int16

DINT

int32

LINT

int64

REAL

real32

EtherNet/IP also supports contiguous polling like Modbus protocol to speed up communication by polling a continous list of addresses. This can be achieved by specifying the batch number for tags with same data type that being arranged contiguously. However auto-batching in Modbus is yet to be supported in EtherNet/IP. Setting value of zero (0) will make the polling separately which is highly discourage in most circumstances.

EtherNet/IP uses string in Path column instead of numerical value in Address column for tag data address. Fill in the Path entry with the device actual tag I/O addressing format. The path string must match with the tag name at Controller Tags, in RSLogix5000 for instance.

Configuring I/O in PLC
Configuring EtherNet/IP tags in SCADA
[Note] Note

Turn Input tag attribute to true for Read-Only input tag.