Skip to content

BBMD and Foreign Device Registration

BACnet/IP Broadcast Management Device (BBMD) allows to connect devices in different IP subnets, providing routing and broadcasting capabilities. A BBMD device will send any received broadcast messages as directed messages to its partner BBMD devices that will forward the message to its subnet.

Every subnet should have a BBMD device, but when this is not possible, a device can register itself to a BBMD device in another subnet as Foreign Device.

For more information and details about this topic, please see the references page.

ESF BACNet Driver support for FDR

The ESF BACNet Driver supports the Foreign Device Registration (FDR). When enabled, the Driver is able to register to a BBMD device as a Foreign Device and connect to devices in other subnets.

The properties used for configuring the registration are the following:

  • FDR Enable: enable the registration of this driver as Foreign Device to a BBMD.
  • FDR BBMD IP Address: the IP Address of the BBMD with which the driver will perform the Foreign Device Registration.
  • FDR BBMD Port: the port to be used to connect to the BBMD for the Foreign Device Registration.
  • FDR Timeout: the time-to-live value of the Foreign Device Registration. After the timeout, the driver will automatically refresh the registration.

ESF BACNet Driver support for BBMD

In addition to the FDR, the ESF BACNet Driver supports also BBMD. The properties used for configuring BBMD are the following:

  • BBMD Enable: enable the registration of this driver as a BBMD.
  • BBMD Device Table: The list of BBMD devices to which the driver will communicate. The entries are in the form address:port where the address is in CIDR notation. The entries must be separated by a comma. A valid example is 10.0.200.4/32:47808,192.168.0.4/32:47810.

IP routes

When configured as Foreign Device or BBMD, it is useful to set a proper static IP route to make the BBMDs reachable from the current subnet. The IP Routes parameter allows the user to set that routes. The entries are in the form subnet:gateway where the subnet is in CIDR notation. The entries must be separated by a comma. A valid example is 172.16.0.0/24:192.168.0.4,10.0.200.4/32:192.168.1.2 that will run the following commands on the system:

route add -net 172.16.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 192.168.0.4
route add -net 10.0.200.4 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 192.168.1.2