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Hello,
Does on the market exists some tools for interoperability testing of modbus devices and tools for network simulation and generating critical conditions (automatically generating test cases) in modbus networks?

The Modbus organisation (http://www.modbus.org) has "Modbus/TCP Conformance Test Software" as part of their Modbus TCP Toolkit.

I've generated automatic tests by just writing them in Python. I would use a modified client to generate "invalid" client requests, and a modified server to generate "invalid" server responses and also exceptions.

Modbus messages are ultimately just strings. You can generate any sort of message you want by slicing and modifying the strings, provided you understand the protocol.

http://www.win-tech.com

Modscan32

Automated Solutions offers Modbus Master and Slave products with comprehensive Modbus function support, including the ability to send custom packets and intentionally send bad packets to verify proper response on slave side.

http://automatedsolutions.com/products/modbus.asp

Free, fully-functioning 30-day trial versions are available for download.

Thanks,

I actually need some tool that is able to automatically generate a huge number of valid Modbus requests, for the purpose of testing external SCADA systems! Does Automated Solutions product include this?

If this is for Modbus/TCP (as opposed to RTU or ASCII), I have a free program which I wrote for this purpose. You can find it at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mblogic/

There are several packages. The one you want is called "mbpoll".

Documentation is found at:
http://mblogic.sourceforge.net/PollMB.html

Installation instructions are at:
http://mblogic.sourceforge.net/Installation.html

This is a Python program, so you will need to install Python if it isn't already installed on your computer. This package doesn't use "Twisted", so you won't need that. Since this is a client, you can also ignore the instructions regarding using port 502.

The mbpoll package contains several programs besides mbpoll. The program is a command line client, which means you can script it. This is especially handy if you are load testing a server, because you can use a bash or batch file to launch many independent copies simultaneously. I've had more than 150 copies running at once bombarding a server with messages to see how well it behaved under load.

The program can be configured to send messages repeatedly at a specified interval. At the end of the test it will display a summary on how many messages were sent and the effective transfer rate (in coils or registers per second, depending on the function selected).

This is GPL licensed Free Software, not a time limited version or demoware.

Automated Solutions products can achieve approx 5~10 mSec base transaction time.

For serial Modbus, you'll need to compute additional time for data transfer (approx .5 mSec per character at 19200 baud); for Modbus/TCP at 100 MHz or higher, packet size is irrelevant since each character equates to microseconds.

I suggest that you download the free, fully-functioning trial version and test it to see if it meets your requirements. The pre-built example apps will have you communicating within seconds.

If you can't find an off-the-shelf solution, contact Automated Solutions to inquire about a custom solution.