BACnet Router Addressing

Router Addressing

The underlying library that Volttron uses for Bacnet supports IP to MS/TP routers. Devices behind the router use a Remote Station address in the form

<network>:<address>

where "network" is the configured network ID of the router and "address" is the address of the device behind the router.

For example to access the device at address 12 for a router configured for network 1002 can be accessed with this address:

1002:12

"network" must be number from 0 to 65534 and "address" must be a number from 0 to 255.

This type of address can be used anywhere an address is required either in configuration of the Volttron BACnet driver or scraping the configuration.

For example, to scrape a device behind a router at 1024:5 you would use a command line like this

python grab_bacnet_config.py 1024:5 1024.5.csv

to write the configuration out to the file "1024.5.csv".

Caveats

BACnet uses a IP broadcast mechanism to communicate using these kind of addresses. If the IP network where the router is connected blocks broadcast traffic then these addresses will not work. (Nothing could communicate with the router anyway, but that is a separate issue.)