Rockwell Automation 1738-AENTR, Series A 1734 POINT I/O and 1738 ArmorPOINT I/O 2 Port Ethernet/IP Adapter User Manual - Manual (Page 13)

Rockwell Automation Publication 1734-UM014B-EN-P - June 2013 5
About the Adapters Chapter 1
Hardware/Software
Compatibility The I/O adapters and the applications described in this manual are compatible
with the following firmware revisions and
software releases.
Contact Rockwell Automation if you need software or firmware upgrades to use
this equipment
Use of the Common
Industrial Protocol (CIP) The adapter uses the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP). CIP is the application
layer protocol specified for EtherNet/IP, the Ethernet Industrial Protocol, as well
as for ControlNet and DeviceNet networks. 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,
input modules are not polled by a controller. Instead, they produce (multicast or
unicast) their data either upon a change of state (COS) or periodically.
Multicast is the default mode for version 17 Logix and earlier controllers and
unicast is the default for version 18 with multicast as a selectable option.
The frequency of update depends upon the options chosen during configuration
and where on the network the input module resides. The input module,
therefore, is a producer of input data, and the controller is a consumer of the data.
Product Firmware Revision/ Software Release
1734-AENTR; 1738-AENTR adapters 3.xx or later
1756-ENBT 2.3 or later
Logix controller 11 or later
RSLogix 5000 software 11 or later
RSLinx software 2.3.1 or later