Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated

Eric Eilberg

Stephen A Wenner

Jessica E Forguites

Timothy C Mirth

Mark G Devonshire

Julie Nguyen

Armand J Craig

Nicholas R Garcias

A method for generating a topology view of an industrial parallel redundancy protocol (PRP) network includes: detecting, by one or more processors, a plurality of nodes on the PRP network; determining, by the one or more processors, a first set of the plurality of nodes that connects to a first local area network (LAN); determining, by the one or more processors, a second set of the plurality of nodes that connects to a second LAN; determining, by the one or more processors, connections between the plurality of nodes; and generating, by the one or more processors, the topology view of the PRP network comprising a topology view of the first LAN and the second LAN according to the determined connections.

Systems and methods for managing PRP networks

To facilitate redundancy in a distributed control system architecture used in an industrial automation environment, a user workstation is connected to multiple enterprise access switches. Separate physical connections established between an application server and the enterprise access switches are configured into a single virtual interface for the application server to provide physical media redundancy between the application server and the enterprise access switches. Redundancy switches are connected to the enterprise access switches and to a first LAN and a second LAN, and are assigned unique IP addresses but communicate using a same default gateway IP address to serve as redundant default gateways. The redundancy switches are configured with a redundancy protocol that enables transmission of duplicate data packets over the first LAN and the second LAN. Redundant industrial controllers are connected to both the first LAN and the second LAN, wherein the redundant industrial controllers utilize non-swapping IP addresses.

Redundant infrastructure for industrial automation distributed control systems

Growing community of inventors

Rocky River, OH, United States of America

Eric Eilberg