Operating Environment of Industrial Ethernet Switch

Although industrial Ethernet is the application of ordinary Ethernet to industrial control systems, from a professional perspective, industrial Ethernet is a distributed real-time control communication network based on IEEE802.3 series standards and TCP/IP, which is suitable for occasions with large data transmission volume, high transmission speed requirements and high real-time performance.

The industrial Ethernet switch is also called the Industrial Switch, which is the Ethernet switch equipment applied to the industrial control field. The industrial switch has the carrier level performance characteristics, can withstand the harsh working environment, and can meet the use needs of various industrial fields. Industrial switches are used in some industrial sites with harsh environmental conditions due to their high protection level (generally IP40), strong electromagnetic compatibility (EMS level 4), and stable working performance, providing a strong guarantee for industrial communications.

What are the operating environments of industrial Ethernet switches?

Operating environment of industrial Ethernet switch

Industrial Ethernet switch products are designed to withstand extreme temperature changes (usually from - 40 ° C to 75 ° C). The appearance is designed to withstand external interference, meet IP40 level protection, and often directly cool the internal high temperature that is very sensitive to the product. The product uses high quality and high reliability components (for example, industrial equipment uses thermal conductive silica gel instead of fans, and electrolytic capacitors are rarely used, which are used on commercial ethernet switches because these components are unreliable due to their short service life).

Who needs an industrial Ethernet switch?

As the next generation product of Ethernet connection equipment, industrial Ethernet switch has more and more complex functions. In addition to its rugged design, it can operate in harsh industrial environments, and also has network management and monitoring functions. Of course, there are more requirements. For example, industrial Ethernet switches need to be waterproof, dust-proof, anti-seismic, anti electromagnetic interference, and have higher reliability requirements to ensure 24-hour uninterrupted long-term operation.

Compared with ordinary switches, industrial Ethernet switches have obvious advantages, such as different topology structures, flexible networking methods, self-healing ability of ring networks, and system redundancy.

Topology refers to the layout of cables in the network. However, in industrial Ethernet, switches or hubs are commonly used. The topology structures are generally star type, ring type, tree type and line type. Different topology structures also bring flexible networking methods. In general, industrial Ethernet switches can support a variety of basic networking structures, such as star type, chain type single ring, double ring, coupling ring, tangent ring, intersection ring, and multiple structure hybrid networking.

Among them, the self-healing ability of the ring network is a major advantage of the ring topology. With the ring topology, the switch can form a ring network. Each switch can automatically determine the optimal transmission path and the backup path. When the priority path is interrupted, the backup path is automatically enabled to achieve rapid self-healing.

More importantly, the use of industrial Ethernet switches can improve the reliability of network connectivity by establishing redundant networks. There are also various ways for industrial Ethernet switches to build redundant networks, mainly including STP, RSTP, and ring network redundancy RapidRing. Each way can shorten the recovery time of network interruption, so as to meet the ultra high requirements of industrial environment on the reliability of industrial control networks.

In fact, many important applications benefit from the use of industrial Ethernet. As the Ethernet switch equipment used in the industrial control field, the industrial Ethernet switch can withstand the harsh working environment, adapt to low temperature and high temperature, have strong electromagnetic interference resistance, salt fog resistance and strong seismic resistance. It is mainly used in industries, road traffic, buildings, mines, oil fields, hydropower stations and other fields.