Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated

Mark G Devonshire

Jessica E Forguites

Sivaram Balasubramanian

Stephen A Wenner

Mark R Hantel

Eric Eilberg

Julie Nguyen

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

Aspects of the present invention provide a ring supervisor operating as a server for maintaining and allocating addresses for devices in a ring topology. The ring supervisor may obtain an ordered list of devices in the ring by sending a data collection frame that passes through each device around the ring with each device appending its preconfigured address information. The ring supervisor may then operate to apply the addressing provided by each device, or alternatively, allocate different addresses to each device from a separate pool. As a result, control program software for ring devices can be developed using a general pool of addresses without requiring specific knowledge of actual addresses. Also, if a device requires replacement, the device may be replaced without requiring modification to the control program to provide the address for the replacement device.

Internet protocol addressing of devices employing the network ring topology

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Chagrin Falls, OH, United States of America

Mark G Devonshire