Rockwell Automation 1747-AENTR SLC 500 EtherNet/IP Adapter User Manual - Manual (Page 11)

Rockwell Automation Publication 1747-UM076C-EN-E - January 2013 5
About the SLC 500 EtherNet/IP Adapter Chapter 1
What the Adapter Does The 1747-AENTR EtherNet/IP adapter performs the following primary tasks:
• Control of real-time I/O data (also known as implicit messaging) – the
adapter serves as a bridge between I/O modules and the network
• Support of messaging data for configuration and programming
information (also known as explicit messaging)
Use of the Common
Industrial Protocol (CIP) The adapter uses the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP), the application layer
protocol specified for EtherNet/IP, the Ethernet Industrial Protocol. It is a
message-based protocol that implements a relative path to send a message from
the producing device in a system to the consuming devices.
The producing device contains the path information that steers the message along
the proper route to reach its consumers. Since the producing device holds this
information, other devices along the path simply pass this information; they do
not store it.
This has the following significant benefits:
• You do not need to configure routing tables in the bridging modules,
which greatly simplifies maintenance and module replacement.
• You maintain full control over the route taken by each message, which
enables you to select alternative paths for the same end device.
Understand the Producer/
Consumer Model The CIP producer and consumer networking model replaces the old source and
destination (master and slave) model. The producer and consumer model reduces
network traffic and increases speed of transmission. In traditional I/O systems,
controllers poll input modules to obtain their input status. In the CIP system,
CONTROLL
ER
EtherNet/IP Network
E
N
B
T
Other
Network
Devices 1
7
4
7
-
A
E
N
T
R SLC I/O