Such is the fate of the InGear NET.LOGIX Driver.

This post explores this recent shift in the tech ecosystem; what exactly happened to InGear, why support has ended, and what you should use instead if your application still relies on NET.LOGIX today.

InGear Drivers End-Of-Life

Once a common choice for communicating between .NET software and Allen-Bradley LOGIX series PLCs, all software drivers have been fully discontinued. This isn’t a “maintenance mode” situation; driver development has stopped, and the license servers used to establish new development environments are no longer available, making ongoing support impossible.

Where did InGear go?

InGear NET.LOGIX was designed at a time when .NET drivers were the primary method for communicating with Allen-Bradley Logix controllers. Since then, the ecosystem has evolved:

• Rockwell has extended its native support for other communication options.
• Open-source libraries like libplctag have gained greater adoption among developers.
• Security and deployment expectations have increased significantly, changing driver demands.

With this shift, InGear NET.LOGIX’s developer decided that it was better to focus its efforts and investments in other areas.

And don’t feel bad if you missed the announcement that support for InGear NET.LOGIX driver has ended. There was no formal public EOL date; their website simply displays an unprotected 404 page with no documentation, downloads, or publicly available support channels.

Which Driver Should I Use Now?

If your application still relies on InGear Net.LOGIX, the good news is, you’re not stuck. We have successfully migrated systems to modern, actively maintained alternatives. In a previous post, we walked through a free and open-source option: Replacing the NET.LOGIX InGear Driver with libplctag.NET, including considerations to make about system architecture as well as migration tips.

This is just one of the many instances in which DMC engineers regularly modernize PLC communication layers as part of broader automation and application development projects, helping teams reduce technical debt and maintain system reliability and efficiency.

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What is libplctag.NET?

libplctag is an open-source C library that enables EthernNet/IP and Modbus TCP reading and writing tags on Rockwell/Allen-Bradley ControlLogix, Micro 850, and SLC 500 and MicroLogix PLCs. libplctag.NET is its .NET wrapper and is available on NuGet. You can find the libplctag repository and the libplctag.NET repository as well.

Advantages of libplctag.NET

One of the biggest advantages of libplctag.NET is that, because it is open source, it does not cost anything! Specifically, the library is dual-licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) and the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License 2+ (LGPL 2+). As mentioned above, libplctag.NET supports EtherNet/IP and Modbus TCP. The provided API is stable and is actively being supported and upgraded. The driver is lightweight, high-performance, and low on memory usage. The documentation and wiki provided in the repositories linked above are very robust and full of examples.

Example Tag Read and Write

Below is an example that demonstrates reading and writing a tag to an Allen-Bradley CompactLogix/ControlLogix PLC that was taken from the libplctag.NET documentation.

As can be seen in the above example, a new tag can be configured using a simple constructor. Read() gets the current value, and Get[Type]([default]) converts this value to [Type]; in the above example, that would be GetInt32(0), which converts the value to an int. Similarly, writing a new value is as simple as Set[Type]([default], [new_value]), which is SetInt32(0, updatedValue) in the above example, and then calling Write().

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