Good morning,
We are trying to communicate with our remote Allen Bradley PLC using the flexy205 with its FLB3205 cellular board. We have configured the NAT 1:1 as indicated in your note, but without success. We are on a private cellular network (APN) The SIM card has the IP address 172.22.3.231 and the PLC 10.110.4.20
How should we configure the flexy?
In addition to the IP address used by the SIM card for the Ewon, is the IP address used by the PLC through NAT 1:1 also reserved for you by your provider?
Typically for remote access you would use eCatcher to establish a VPN connection, or possibly M2Web if you need to use something like VNC or a web server. Can you explain why you want to use NAT 1:1 to this private cellular network for your application?
hello hugh,
The PLC IP address is not provided by the cellular provider.
On the other hand, it is provided by our computer technicians.
We want to use the flexy205 as a gateway to communicate with our private cellular network. you don’t have to go through a webserver or a VPN, just use the flexy205 as a gateway with its NAT. In order to connect to our SCADA Factorytalk View.
Hi Frederic,
The PLC’s IP address is set by the technicians, but NAT 1:1 maps this LAN IP to an address on the Ewon’s WAN, which in this case is the cellular network. This allows a user connected to that WAN to go to the mapped IP address, which the Ewon translates into a connection to the LAN device. Because there is a separate WAN IP involved, that IP also needs to be available on the WAN.
Can you attach a backup with support files from the device so we can check on its current configuration? You can download one from the Flexy’s web interface under Diagnostic → Files Transfer by clicking “Support files” at the top right.
Hi Frederic,
The WAN IP used for the PLC through NAT 1:1 is the same as the Ewon’s WAN IP, which won’t work. You will need to choose another unused WAN IP.
Bonjour Hugh,
I have already tried this configuration, but without success.
Hi Frederic,
Is the WAN IP being used for the PLC reserved on your cellular network? I am not very familiar with how private cellular networks are configured, but if there is a static IP reserved for the Ewon, there must also be one reserved for the LAN device that’s being made available through NAT 1:1. The cellular network will need to be able to route requests for that IP address to the Ewon so that it can translate them t to a connection to the LAN device.
Hello Hugh,
Yes the address (172.22.3.231) is reserved for the PLC. and the address 10.110.4.20 is reserved for the PLC. Can you send me a program that should work according to my given IP address?
Hi Frederic,
Can you submit a ticket to our support portal at https://support.hms-networks.com/ so we can provide some more in-depth support for this issue?