1. An industrial control system, comprising: a plurality of I/O modules operable to interface with a process to exchange I/O data with the process; a scanner operable to exchange the I/O data with the I/O modules and communicate using an optimized connection packet including the I/O data for each module arranged in an unformatted data block; and an industrial controller operable to exchange the optimized connection packet with the scanner and control the process using the I/O data included in optimized connection packet, the industrial controller being further operable to store a plurality of cast tags, each cast tag being associated with one of the I/O modules and providing a logical reference to a subset of the unformatted data block including at least a portion of the I/O data for the associated I/O module.