Re: [foxboro] Node Bus "Sniffer"

We've also had several nodebus-related problems, almost all of which involve
Micro I/A stations in one way or another.  These stations seem to be high
nodebus traffic "canaries".  If one of the Micro I/A's fail, this is the
only way for us to know we had a high nodebus traffic spike.  We recently
had a WP51D start going on and off-line repeatedly, and then finally take
out two Micro I/A stations before we decided to shut it down and replace it.
It sure would have been nice to have a tool that would help us analyze the
nodebus traffic so that we could see exactly what was happening and maybe
prevent losing the Micro I/A's.  From this discussion, it looks like the
freeware or commercial products don't really address I/A nodebus traffic
specifically.

Tim Lowell
Control Systems Engineer
ConocoPhillips, Trainer Refinery
Phone:  610-364-8362
Fax:    610-364-8211
Tim.C.Lowell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Corey R Clingo [SMTP:clingoc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
        Sent:   Thursday, July 31, 2003 1:43 PM
        To:     foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
        Subject:        Re: [foxboro] Node Bus "Sniffer"


        Ethereal is a good general-purpose sniffer, and free
(www.ethereal.com).  I
        think there's even a port for Solaris on sunfreeware.com.  Of
course, all
        you'll get is packet capture, and statistics, as I don't think it
has a
        decoder module for Fox I/A nodebus (but it does for just about
everything
        else :).  If yoiu want the weighted traffic graph thingie that the
newer
        Network General products provide, there's one out there called Tvark
        (tvark.com, also free), but I haven't used it.

        Whether these are better than the original NG Sniffer (tm), I don't
know.
        But they are certainly more accessible to me from a cost standpoint.
Now,
        if only Invensys would publish some protocol details (hint, hint),
maybe
        someone would be inspired to write some decoder plug-ins <g>.
Seriously,
        I'd like to see this happen, for everyone's benefit.  Some
nodebus-related
        system problems here (not in my plant, fortunately) underscored the
fact
        that not very many people know what is really happening on the
nodebus --
        including those that work for Invensys.

        Corey Clingo
        BASF Corp.
        
 
 
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