White paper from Cisco and Rockwell helps simplify IP address management

When building a machine, skid or industrial application, engineers often re-use IP addresses. Network address translation (NAT) is a methodology that enables this without introducing a duplicate IP address error into the plant-wide architecture.

A new white paper from Cisco and Rockwell Automation, ‘Deploying Network Address Translation within a Converged Plantwide Ethernet Architecture’, provides guidance and validated architecture designs to help engineers deploy NAT for one machine or skid or for an entire cell or area zone in a plant.

Manufacturers benefit from NAT when the IP address space within the plant-wide network infrastructure is limited and not every device needs to communicate outside the skid or machine-level network. Meanwhile, OEMs can leverage NAT to more quickly replicate skids and machines.

The white paper summarises key design principles from a comprehensive design and implementation guide on NAT, which is available here.