Is the Industrial Ethernet an Open standard ? Since Industrial Ethernet is derivated from office Ethernet, it is clearly an open standard. From the user’s point of view, this common basis is the most obvious benefit. By choosing Ethernet, users don’t have to worry about being restricted by the product manufacturer’s own proprietary protocol structure. Thus any IEEE 802.3 device with a standard 10/100BaseT(X) Ethernet port can be easily connected to each other by just plugging them into the same Ethernet LAN. In addition, Ethernet is already commonplace in office environments, and offers many useful services, such as e-mail, FTP, and web browsing, all well known to users. Applying these services in an industrial control network gives users a head start, since they do not need to spend a lot of time learning new application programs. This also means that training costs can be lowered, and development time can be speeded up, since system developers are already familiar with the software that is readily available for Ethernet applications.

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What is different between an Ethernet switch and an Ethernet hub ? The common Ethernet hub simply broadcasts each message it receives to every one of its ports. Each Ethernet device also has to wait for its turn to ‘talk’ to the hub, increasing the probability of message collisions; therefore, real-time operation is jeopardized and determinism is difficult. Alternatively, the RJ-Switch automatically determines and remembers where an Ethernet device is located and routes messages only through the appropriate port. This minimizes network loading and enables true deterministic communications over Ethernet.

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What is different between unmanaged, Ring or managed solution ? An unmanaged switch is a truly plug and play device which does not require any configuration. Just plug in it, connect the Ethernet cables from users such as personal computers or I/O devices, and it will immediately communicate data between users. The Ring switch has extended capabilities. It allow to connect devices in a Ring topology. When a link is broken, the Ring switch instantly transfers data to new path. This provide fast network and avoid fault on the network. Managed switches can be configurated to improve the network performance and control the traffic. They may be configurated via a Telnet console or even a web browser. Different management features are available.

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Is the Ring switch Managed or unmanaged ? The Ring models are semi-managed. They combines the plug-and-play simplicity of an umanaged switch with some high performance features of managed switches. Ring RJ-Switch can be pre-configurated to just run. But it is also possible to fine tune the performance of the ring by using a simple Windows wizard.

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How many switches can I connect together on the same LAN ? Switches can be cascaded almost without limit because unlike a passive hub that has retransmission limitations, an active switch regenerates Ethernet messages as if it were an original transmission. There really is no limit as long as the total latency is acceptable to your application. For example, the total latency of 10 Ring RJ-Switches cascaded (connected in series) is typically less than 50 us.

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