EtherNet/IP (CIP)

Industrial/ICS 🏭 • Protocols 🔗 • Difficulty: premium

Definition

EtherNet/IP carries the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) over standard Ethernet/IP using TCP and UDP. It supports explicit messaging for configuration and implicit, cyclic I/O for real-time control.

Examples

  • A controller establishes an implicit I/O connection to a remote I/O rack at 10 ms RPI using UDP; the switch uses IGMP snooping to manage multicast.
  • An HMI uses explicit messaging (Get/Set Attribute Single) over TCP to read a drive’s speed and write a parameter change during maintenance.

Discover 🔎

EtherNet/IP is a widely deployed industrial Ethernet protocol defined by ODVA. It encapsulates the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) over TCP/UDP, giving a single object model across devices like PLCs, drives, and I/O. Its strengths are vendor interoperability, fast cyclic I/O, and rich configuration services. Safe and reliable operation depends on proper network engineering (multicast control, QoS, timing) and tight access controls for configuration traffic.

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