Main Measurement Factors for Selecting Gigabit Industrial Switch

The Industrial Switch market is mainly used in power automation, factory automation, coal mine automation, rail transit, wind power and other fields, followed by metallurgy, petroleum and petrochemical, road traffic control automation, building automation control system, oilfield control automation, hydropower station control automation, computer room monitoring system, water conservancy monitoring, environmental protection monitoring and other industrial control automation places. Industrial switch is applied in some industrial sites with harsh environmental conditions for its high protection level (generally IP40), strong electromagnetic compatibility (EMS4) and stable working performance, providing strong guarantee for industrial communication.

Because the industrial switch can withstand the harsh working environment, the product range is rich, and the port configuration is flexible, which can meet the needs of various industrial control fields. With the rapid development of power metallurgy, petrochemical, environmental protection, transportation, construction and other industries, the demand for industrial switches in the informatization construction of various industries is also increasing. Now let's understand the main measurement factors for selecting gigabit industrial switches?

1. Compatibility

In fact, for gigabit industrial switches, we have to pay attention to compatibility: under no circumstances should there be any incompatibility between industrial Ethernet devices and commercial Ethernet devices. Corresponding to different industrial fieldbus solutions, industrial Ethernet equipment should have corresponding capabilities and compatibility. Layer 3 feature: Layer 3 switch has routing function, and uses IP address information for network path selection. Industrial Ethernet switches and other components of industrial Ethernet should be able to use standard TCP/IP protocol for communication.

It is very important for the device compatibility of the Internet gateway, especially in terms of traffic, and the adjustment of network speed. So we have many choices in the face of industrial switches on the market. When we don't know how to choose, we should try to choose a reliable gigabit industrial switch according to our overall equipment.

2. Reliability

In the industrial field environment, reliability is crucial. Factors related to product reliability mainly include the tolerance of equipment hardware to the working environment, such as working temperature range, EMC electromagnetic compatibility, lightning protection level, installation and power supply mode, fanless design, redundancy mode, fault diagnosis and recovery ability, etc. In the parameter description of gigabit industrial switches, there should be a detailed description of the operating temperature range, electromagnetic protection and lightning protection level.

3. Switching Structure

For the structural equipment of gigabit industrial switch, if you want to choose the industrial switch with good reputation, you should pay attention to the switching structure: one is to adopt a centralized switching system, such as placing a control engine module with very strong performance and function in the center, and setting a simple interface card on the interface module. The disadvantage is that in the case of low port efficiency of network data, all data exchange depends on the data processing board capacity of the core board. With the increase of the number of boards, the performance of the entire switch shows a downward trend, that is, the number of ports in the chassis is inversely proportional to the performance.

4. Real-time

Network data transmission will generate a certain delay. Therefore, the first thing to consider when selecting a gigabit industrial switch is the port delay of the switch in the data frame forwarding process. In the standard factory automation control system, the system can tolerate a response time of no more than 10 milliseconds. Therefore, when selecting gigabit industrial switches, it should be noted that the switch port delay should not exceed 10 microseconds.

In a word, the main factors to measure the selection of gigabit industrial switch include compatibility, reliability, switching structure and real-time performance. In addition, users should also select the appropriate twisted pair or optical fiber interface according to some basic requirements such as transmission distance and transmission bandwidth in the process of selecting gigabit industrial switch. PoE Ethernet switch can be used for power supply and wiring convenience when connecting video terminals, wireless base stations and other devices.