Industrial Engineer · phase 5 of 16
CIP
Common Industrial Protocol, the object-oriented application protocol used by EtherNet/IP and other ODVA networks.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- CIP is the application protocol that EtherNet/IP, DeviceNet and ControlNet all share. It defines devices as collections of objects with attributes and services, whichever wire carries the messages.
- Example
- Reading a drive's output frequency is a CIP request for an attribute of the drive's motor object. The same request works whether the drive sits on EtherNet/IP or DeviceNet.
- Why it matters
- Because the object model is shared, tools, EDS files and diagnostics carry across networks. Understanding that a device is a set of objects turns a mysterious error code into a class, an instance and an attribute you can look up.
- Hook
- One vocabulary, several dialects, many cables.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 5: PLC Industrial Communications
The protocols that let controllers, drives and operator panels talk, plus the addressing and description files that make them agree on what was said.
