Problem
The RMC100 ENET can frequently lose communication exposed to high traffic networks. Sometimes this will require restarting the RMC100 to regain communication. This typically shows up after network changes that expose the RMC100 to more network traffic.
Cause
The RMC100 ENET card only supports 10 Mb half-duplex communication. This means the card does not support receiving and sending data at the same time. The RMC100 ENET is easily overwhelmed by the devices found on todays networks. Network monitoring devices that try to talk to every device on the network can overload the RMC100 ENET.
Fix
The first thing to try is upgrade the R100 ENET module to the latest firmware. If this doesn’t fix it, the best option to improve the RMC100 ENET reliability is create an isolated machine network that only contains the RMC100’s and other machine components. Other options are listed below as well.
- Replace hubs with switches.
- Replace hubs and non-IGMP capable switches with IGMP capable switches.
- Replace half-duplex components with full-duplex components.
- Replace 10 Mbps with 100 Mbps components.
- Increase the Requested Packet Interval (RPI).
- Split the network into two or more smaller networks.
Other Resources
In RMCWin Help
- Contents -> Communications->Ethernet->Controlling and Monitoring the RMC over Ethernet->EtherNet/OP Perfomance->Predicting the Effect of Collisions
- Contents -> Communications->Ethernet->Controlling and Monitoring the RMC over Ethernet->EtherNet/OP Perfomance->Setting Up Large EtherNet/IP Networks