ALC Arcnet Comms Issues

[wazzer1976]

Hi Guys,

Another existing site I am on I am having issues with controllers dropping out whilst viewing on WebCTRL. The networks house 4 SE6166 controllers then go out to the floor for the FCU's which all have ZN253's. I have a "Spongebob" at each end of the bus and to my knowledge, both of these floors have been fine since 2017...I am just noticing now doing service work.

The AAR's for each floor have the following driver drv_aar_6-00a-067
SE6166 have drv_se_6-00a-067
ZN253 have drv_zn_6-06-035

The problem is really intermittent but seems to be if I am going through the program and making changes to values in logic mode, after a couple of changes it will time out saying it cannot communicate with the controller.

The same thing happens when going through the floor plans and clicking on the FCU's...Every now and then it will just lock out for a variable amount of time.

Any ideas what else I can check please?

Thanks,

Warren

[Cool breeze 38]

whats the total amount of controllers? does the count or length need repeaters.

I had a site that had a repeater go bad and have issues like this.

[wazzer1976]

33 on each floor (4 x SE6166's and 29 x ZN253) not too sure of the length of run

[chesehd]

Are the problems on the "B" side of the AAR, on the backbone network or both?

[wazzer1976]

I have just checked the drawings and one of these floors has a repeater so that's worth looking into, thanks for the tip. The other floor, although the same size doesn't have a repeater shown on the drawing so I'll look into that.

[wazzer1976]

B Side, backbone seems fine

[MaxBurn]

Pull modstats from the IP network gateway and the AAR's and look for ARCnet reconfigurations that are not zero.

[control$]

My top ten list for communication problems.

1) Construction work going on? #1 issue..Pulled wires, broken wires, wires so tight you can strum music. 300' of wire rapped up above the ceiling. Bad splices, wire nuts...use of non cap wiring to "fix" broken segment.
2) Any outdoor conduits? Water in the conduits. Smashed EMT on the roof.
3) Bad control. Yep..one bad apple can ruin the network.
4) New programming? Nothing like a bunch of new airflow stations broadcasting at a .1 COV.
5) Crazy trending going on..gotta love them gumming up a network.
6) And my new favorite. Third party trending tools!! Why am I seeing Niagara on a discover..Why is polling my points every nano second.

Tools for Arcnet ALC
1) Bacscope
2) Wireshark