Gary.Johnson

Industrial router recommendations

9 posts in this topic

Greetings all,

Looking for a DIN rail mounted router ('layer 3') for an Ethernet/IP application that requires port forwarding/translation/redirection. Finding lots of devices that can do 1:1 NAT but PAT seems to be much less common. Prefer something easy to get in the USA.

TIA

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Just FYI: Ports are layer 4 in the ISO stack model, and layer 3 in the TCP/IP stack model. This basically calls for a router and not a managed switch.

Managed switches (L3) deals with MAC addresses and are able to do e.g. VLAN translation and/or policy-based forwarding. They are generally not designed, nor will do any kind of port translation/forwarding. This is what routers are designed for. General firewalls normally have port related functions built-in, so I would start with looking for a good, industrial firewall (not sure what exists in the U.S. though).

Edited by kaare_t

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On 2/14/2017 at 1:19 AM, kaare_t said:

Just FYI: Ports are layer 4 in the ISO stack model, and layer 3 in the TCP/IP stack model. This basically calls for a router and not a managed switch.

Managed switches (L3) deals with MAC addresses and are able to do e.g. VLAN translation and/or policy-based forwarding. They are generally not designed, nor will do any kind of port translation/forwarding. This is what routers are designed for. General firewalls normally have port related functions built-in, so I would start with looking for a good, industrial firewall (not sure what exists in the U.S. though).

Thanks kaare_t,

One of the things slowing my search is filtering the verbiage. Some folks think of a 'port' as the physical hole you plug a patch cable into, others think it is an attribute of a logical address. Some suppliers offer 'Layer 3 switches' where others call them routers and some offer 'routers' with no (TCP/IP) layer 3 capability at all. I end up having to download the manual or tech spec to identify the specific capabilities and protocols the device supports. Very time consuming.

Edited by Gary.Johnson

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On 2/6/2017 at 7:31 PM, cajunconfigurator said:

I use the RedLion N-Tron and Sixnet managed switches, not sure if either do port address translations. but they are reliable and easy to get. 

 

http://www.redlion.net/products/industrial-networking/ethernet-solutions/managed-ethernet-switches

Thanks, took a look and Red Lion devices can't route by IP address/port. The search continues.

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