Selected Practical Aspects of Communication Diagnosis in the Industrial Network

Abstract Industrial networks combine elements of distributed control systems: process stations, operator stations and engineering stations. DCS stations often communicate using a dedicated, closed communication protocol. The industrial networks can be also used to manage communication between the stations of various systems, separate in terms of configuration. The process station communicates here with an external operator station, that is the SCADA system. For this purpose, the process stations and the SCADA systems can also communicate according to standard communication protocols, e.g. Modbus TCP. The paper examines the selected variants of diagnosing the communication status between the process station and the external operator station conducted according to the Modbus TCP protocol. The practical methods of finding the communication system unfitness causes are discussed.