Wire compatibility

Supported communications, or “wire compatibility” between platforms and tools can be a factor in different job scenarios. Version compatibility is also relevant when it comes to feature support between N4 and AX. The following sections describe compatibility between the two major versions of Niagara with regard to communications and features.

Supported connections

Workbench can connect to stations running NiagaraAX as well as stations running Niagara 4. The following table summarizes the possible connections and indicates which are supported in Niagara 4.

Communications support between Niagara 4 and NiagaraAX

From	To	Supported	Notes
AX Workbench	N4 station, N4 Supervisor	No	Prohibited in software.
AX Workbench	N4 platform	No	Prohibited in software.
N4 Workbench	AX platform	Yes	Provides support necessary for AX to N4 upgrades. A few functions from the Workbench remote controller Platform Administration view are unavailable, including the Commissioning Wizard function.
AX Workbench	AX station	Yes	Supported in software. AX Workbench is required to configure AX station.
AX station	N4 station, N4 Supervisor	Yes	Discovery of points, schedules, and histories in N4 stations is unavailable. However, you can manually add points. Refer to the following section (Features and compatibility) for more details.
N4 station, N4 Supervisor	AX station	Yes	Refer to the following section (Features and compatibility) for more details.
N4 station	AX Supervisor	No	Not prohibited in software, but unsupported.

Features and compatibility

A limited number of features are supported when communicating between Niagara 4 and AX-3.8.

This table indicates which features are supported when communicating between stations.

Feature compatibility table

Feature	From N4 to AX	From AX to N4	Additional comments
Point discovery	No ( AX Supervisor)	Yes ( N4 Supervisor)	AX stations cannot discover points in N4 stations. The alternative is to manually add and configure the points.
Point data	Yes	Yes	N4 supports virtual points in AX stations. AX supports virtual points in N4 stations.
Export Histories	No	Yes	N4 uses different history encoding, and so detects and converts history records as they come in.
Import Histories	No	Yes
Alarms routed to and acknowledged	No	Yes
Export Schedules	Yes	No
Import Schedules	Yes	No
Synchronize users out (sync out)	Yes, but only users AX is capable of supporting	No	Supported users are those assigned an authentication scheme with a password that can be ported to the AX station. The synchronization process is supported in only one direction. LDAP is a good alternative for network user synchronization. Although AX stations do not support the HTML5 user prototype, you can synchronize users configured with the HTML5 user prototype to AX stations by enabling the `User Defined 1` configuration flag on the `web_WebProfileConfig` property of the user prototype slot in the AX station.
Synchronize users in (sync in)	No	Yes, but only users AX is capable of supporting
Virtual points	Yes	Yes
Tunneling	n/a	n/a	As Fox, HTTP, and platform communications provide insufficient security, they are not supported in N4. Serial tunneling is supported.
Export tags	No, stations cannot join as subordinates	Yes, stations can join as subordinates	For the AX station (subordinate) to join an N4 station (Supervisor), prior to executing the export tag join, the two-way Fox connection in each station’s NiagaraNetwork must be established between the stations. Failure to preconfigure the two-way connection results in an error during the export tag join. Using Px files with ExportTags may be problematic as all Px files must be converted for use with N4.
File transfer using Fox (NiagartaDeviceFileExt) is supported.	Yes	Yes	File permission checks are enforced.
Provisioning	Yes	No	Supported operations for AX subordinates include: Update licenses Backup stations Copy Supervisor file Install valid AX software Upgrade out-of-date AX software Restore prior station backup, for example, from the step history view of a backup job. N4 provisioning robots will not run on AX stations.

NOTE: For Niagara 4 Supervisor to provision AX stations in addition to its own stations, you must import the software database from the prior Supervisor into the new Supervisor’s software database. However, Niagara 4 Supervisor cannot directly upgrade platforms to Niagara 4.