# Operation without ENI

The EC-Monitor can operate on a reduced feature set without an ENI file. This is particularly useful in cases where an ENI file is unavailable or inaccessible. To operate the EC-Monitor in this mode, configure the network using the **eCnfType_GenEBI** configuration type.

In this mode, the EC-Monitor is able to observe basic information on the bus such as the network topology, SubDevice descriptions and registers. The application can retrieve this information using [emonGetBusSlaveInfo](api_slave.html.md#emongetbusslaveinfo) and [emonReadSlaveRegister](api_slave.html.md#emonreadslaveregister) respectively. Because the EC-Monitor does not store or access EtherCAT® SubDevice Information (ESI) files, it does not have a process data image, and APIs which depend on configuration data will be limited or non-functional.

The EC-Monitor supports exporting an ENI Builder (\*.ebi) configuration file. This file contains the observed network topology and SubDevice descriptions and can be imported in the acontis EC-Engineer, which can export an ENI file in turn. This ENI file can then be used to operate the EC-Monitor on its full feature set.

#### SEE ALSO
- [emonConfigureNetwork](api_general.html.md#emonconfigurenetwork)
- [emonExportEniBuilderConfig](api_general.html.md#emonexportenibuilderconfig)