Fieldbus Protocol Family

There are a lot of fieldbus protocols existing, like LON, BACnet, PROFIBUS, PROFINET, Modbus, CAN, ...

Historically, the fieldbusses running on a variety of proprietary hardware busses, a common example is the differential RS-485 bus. As the name says, field busses are generally realized as bus (or line) topologies. Such a line topology was easier and cheaper to realize than the star topology that is common practice in most Ethernet networks of today.

Today, the fieldbus manufactures are leaving proprietary hardware busses and more and more using standard EthernetHardware. Many manufacturers that used to have their own proprietary protocol for the communication to their devices realized on RS-485 or RS-232 do implement their protocol on top of UDP or TCP. This brings advantages like higher communication speed, the capability to easily implement multi master communication as well as the possibility to use the same infrastructure (cabling) for other protocols in parallel.

Wireshark and fieldbusses

Currently Wireshark cannot capture from proprietary fieldbusses, as there is no known capturing hardware available which is compatible with Wireshark.

As there's no way to import that kind of captured data into Wireshark, there's also no dissection of any such proprietary fieldbus protocols available.

BACnet

The BACnet protocol has been designed specifically to meet the communication needs of building automation and control systems for applications such as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning control, lighting control, access control, and fire detection systems.

It is defined for several physical layers including BACnet/IP for which dissectors for Wireshark exist.

PROFIBUS

PROFIBUS is a widely used fieldbus protocol and was introduced a long time ago (anyone got an exact date?). [According to the book PROFIBUS, Edited by Klaus Bender, ISBN 13-012691-8, Copyright 1993, Prentice Hall publisher .. In the fall of 1987, the German Federal Minister for Research and Technology requested the collaborative project titled 'Field Bus'. 13 companies and 5 institutes worked together to develop an open field bus system under the name PROFIBUS, based upon the ISO model. April 1991 was when the PROFIBUS was standardized as the German standard DIN 19245.]

It is based on RS485 (differential) bus hardware with a transfer rate of up to 12MBit/s.

There are several different PROFIBUS subprotocols existing, like PROFIBUS DP, PROFIBUS FMS and PROFIBUS PA.

PROFINET

The PROFINET protocols are based on Ethernet. Dissectors for Wireshark exist.

The EPL protocol is based on Ethernet. Dissector for Wireshark exists (Protocols/epl).

Ether-S-Bus

Ether-S-Bus is a successor of the S-Bus protocol developed and introduced by the company Saia-Burgess Controls AG. Ether-S-Bus is used for the communication to and between PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller) manufactured by Saia-Burgess Controls Ltd. A dissector for EtherSBus exists. Note that there is no relation to the S-Bus common in the ISDN technology.

Ether-S-I/O

Ether-S-I/O is a protocol developed by the company Saia-Burgess Controls AG. Ether-S-I/O is used for data transfer between PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller) and remote input/output devices (RIOs) manufactured by Saia-Burgess Controls Ltd. A dissector for EtherSIO is in preparation.

EtherCAT

The EtherCAT protocol is based on Ethernet. Dissector for Wireshark exists (Protocols/ethercat).

KNXnet/IP

KNXnet/IP (formerly EIBnet/IP) is a protocol for tunnelling KNX (EIB) communication over IP networks. The protocol is published in theKNX Handbook and in the European standard EN 13321-2:2006 (Open Data Communication in Building Automation, Controls and Building Management - Home and Building Electronic Systems - Part 2: KNXnet/IP Communication).

A dissector for Wireshark exists (http://knxnetipdissect.sourceforge.net/). Note that the plugin does not decode the cEMI frames embedded in the KNXnet/IP packets (i.e., the "non-IP" part such as the KNX destination address or the application layer control field). Neither does it decode datapoint types (e.g., dimmer setvalues).

FieldbusProtocolFamily (last edited 2010-08-27 11:53:44 by Christian Durrer)