Dealing with PLC Equipment that use same I addressing

I work in a manufacturing environment which has a lot of equipment using PLC networking.

- We have an Electronics Manager who is in the midst of an effort to connect all of this equipment to a central server running a PLC control and monitoring interface.

- We have Cisco networking - 3750X Layer 3 switches at the core, and 2960 layer 2 switching at remote closets (where the PLC device would connect).

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We have encountered a scenario where a vendor has installed their equipment on 2 lines, same equipment in each line, and both lines have the same IP addresses for each part.

- In this case, there is one primary interface for each line, and both use the same IP - let's say 10.1.1.1

- The goal is that our PLC server needs to be able to monitor both lines without conflict.

- The vendor advised us to use NAT translation for the ports where the two devices will be connected so that each one would appear as a different IP.

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My question is... Can a Cisco 2960 switch perform this kind of NAT translation on a port to port basis?

Otherwise we are planing to put in two small Routers in front of each device to perform the NAT function for us.

I don't know that I'm in love with this plan, although I'm still somewhat new to the world of PLC networking, and maybe that's normal?

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Was curious to see how someone else would approach it.

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