MB3660-8-2AC, Modbus/TCP till ASCII/RTU

Modbus gateway with dual LANs, dual AC power inputs, 8 RS-232/422/485 ports, 0 to 60°C operating temperature

• Innovative Command Learning eliminates the need to key-in SCADA Modbus commands (acts as an agent gateway)
• High performance through active and parallel polling of serial devices
• Supports serial (Master) to serial (Slave) communication
• 2 Ethernet ports with the same IP or dual IP addresses
• SD card for configuration backup
• Access by up to 256 TCP master/client devices, or connect to 128TCP slave/server devices
• Dual VDC or VAC power inputs with wide power input range
• 3-pin fault relay circuit for event alarms
• 2 kV isolation protection (for “-I” models)

Overview

The MGate MB3660 (MB3660-8 and MB3660-16) series gateways are redundant Modbus gateways that convert between the Modbus TCP and Modbus RTU/ASCII protocols. They can be accessed by up to 256 TCP master/client devices, or connect to 128 TCP slave/server devices. The MGate MB3660 series isolation model provides 2 kV isolation protection suitable for power substation applications. The MGate MB3660 gateways are designed to easily integrate Modbus TCP and RTU/ASCII networks. The MGate MB3660 series gateways offer features that make network integration easy, customizable, and compatible with almost any Modbus network. For large-scale Modbus deployments, MGate MB3660 gateways can effectively connect a large number of Modbus nodes to the same network. The MB3660 series can physically manage up to 248 serial slave nodes for 8-port models or 496 serial slave nodes for 16-port models (the Modbus standard only defines Modbus IDs from 1 to 247). Each RS-232/422/485 serial port can be configured individually for Modbus RTU or Modbus ASCII operation and for different baudrates, allowing both types of networks to be integrated with Modbus TCP through one Modbus gateway.

High Performance with Innovative Command Learning

The MGate MB3660 series gateways support two communication modes: transparent mode and agent mode. For transparent mode, the gateway converts Modbus commands from Modbus TCP to Modbus RTU/ASCII, and vice versa, or from serial Master to serial Slave. However, since only one Modbus protocol request-response action can be executed at any given time, each Modbus device has to wait its turn, resulting in poorer performance. Agent mode is designed to overcome this performance weakness. By allowing users to manually key in Modbus commands, the gateway can send Modbus commands to multiple Modbus devices at the same time. Since the gateway actively and continuously retrieves data from Modbus devices simultaneously through the different serial ports, users will see a dramatic reduction in the amount of time a Modbus device needs to wait to be accessed.