As industrial automation systems continue to scale and increasingly integrate with enterprise IT infrastructures (for example in data centers), IPv6 is becoming a critical technology for the future evolution of the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP). IPv6 enables new approaches to scalability, address management, and network interoperability that are difficult to achieve with IPv4-based solutions.
Since the last ODVA Industry Conference, significant progress has been made toward introducing IPv6 support into EtherNet/IP and the entire CIP ecosystem, including CIP Safety. Building on the roadmap outlined in “An IPv6 Roadmap for EtherNet/IP”, this paper provides an update on the current state of the work and highlights recent technical results. It discusses the challenges encountered when designing IPv6-related CIP Objects, including object modelling, address management, and interactions with existing CIP services, and explains how these challenges have been addressed.
It also presents the technical details of device provisioning at scale using IPv6 within EtherNet/IP networks. It discusses how IPv6, combined with existing CIP mechanisms and well-known IP technologies, can be applied to simplify system deployment and commissioning workflows for customers, system integrators, and device vendors.
The paper concludes with a preview of the next steps on the IPv6 roadmap for EtherNet/IP and outlines areas of ongoing work, providing insight into how IPv6 capabilities are expected to evolve within the CIP ecosystem.
Authors Filip Zembok, Principal Development Engineer, Rockwell Automation Jakub Korbel, Networks Architect, Rockwell Automation Arun Guru, Principal Engineer/Systems Architecture, Kinetix Division, Rockwell Automation
