Points for Industrial Ethernet Network
It is a era for industrial automation, organizations and manufacturers are rapidly adopting the appropriate standard based industrial Ethernet technology to ensure a more secure, reliable and deterministic and cost effective operation
network. However, many industrial control system installations is by IT technical department technician who might have knowledge limited to office Ethernet network without understanding the industrial Ethernet network characteristics to deploy a substantially great control system without leaving un-stability factors .
What factors to be considered when choose an industrial Ethernet network? May take following basic points into consideration : data rate, installation method, power supply, Ethernet communication protocol, Ethernet ports, fiber ports, simple communication or managed communication, the shell for equipment heat dispassion , If there is higher requirement for industrial Ethernet management, more details are to be considered such as signal strength , Port configuration, error alarm, such as signal strength, port setup, error alarm, serial port usage, Trunking TM redundancy, ring redundancy, Quality of Service (QoS), Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), SPAN provided by industrial Ethernet switches. Engineers should choose the most appropriate industrial Ethernet product according to own control management system.
The Ethernet redundant function is developed based on the requirement on the high reliability in industrial environments. Engineers may choose from RSTP, RapidRing TM to Trunking which have their own different strengths and features according to their own requirements. To understand and learn the characteristics of industrial Ethernet redundant technology, following is the review of Ethernet equipment development process:
Hub
many may be very familiar with hubs and them to connect a variety of Ethernet based devices. Such as personal computer, programmable controllers ect. hubs receive message from another port then pass the message to all other ports at low speed and less efficiency which even might raise message collision I, it is plug and play type without redundancy function.
Unmanaged Switch
Unmanaged switch is developed based on hub, it is more intelligent than hub and can realize routing message from one port to another, the unmanaged switch can detect the network speed of each device automatically. Additionally, it has the function of “MAC address table”which can identify and remember the network equipment. In other words, if port 2 receives a message with a specific identifier, then the switch sends all messages with that particular identifier to port 2. Even the intelligence avoids collision and improves transmission performance, but unmanaged switch can’t implement any form of communication detection and redundancy configuration.
Managed Switch
The next generation of Ethernet connectivity device is managed switch which has more complex features and more expensive compared with hubs and unmanaged switches. Managed switches provide more function and can be fully configured through a web-based interface. It can automatically interact with the network device, the user can also manually configure the speed of each port and traffic control. Some older devices may not be able to use automatic interaction, so manual configuration is essential
The vast majority of managed switches typically also provide advanced features such as SNMP (Simple Network
Management Protocol) for remote monitoring and configuration, port mapping for diagnostics, VLANs for network
devices (virtual local area networks), To ensure that the priority message through the priority arrangement
function. redundant networks can be set up with managed switches. Using a ring topology, a managed switch can
form a ring network. Each managed switch can automatically determine the optimal transmission path and alternate
path, and automatically use the alternate path when the priority path is interrupted.
Fiber Zip Technology offers managed and unmanaged industrial Ethernet switches for industrial Ethernet Network.