Industrial Networking Resource Center

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Controls engineers need a variety of information on industrial networking infrastructure topics such as wire, cable, fiberoptics, connection options, wireless technology, signal transmission and conversion, network configuration and monitoring and device power options.

Industrial Ethernet components to be evaluated include managed and unmanaged switches, routers, gateways, segment repeaters, and monitoring and configuration software.

Industrial Networking includes integrating factory floor industrial networks and process plant floor networks with company enterprise networks.

Wireless networks are attractive in applications where the cost of running signal cable and wiring, power cabling, or both is unattractive.

Timely news, back-to-basics primers, feature articles, technical white papers and descriptions of the latest products provide valuable insights that can be used in designing and building machine controls.

White Papers: In Depth Research

Industrial Network Management: Finding the Perfect Solution
Author: Hochin Yang, Product Manager, Moxa Inc.
Posted: 07/15/2010
If you manage or operate an industrial automation network, then network management is something that you are already doing. All of the activities that are involved in configuring, maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting your network are network management. For example, it is important to know which parts of your network are dependent on each other, how heavily each section of the network is being used, whether some devices are more prone to failure than others, and when devices should be replaced to prevent failure while in use. In industrial networks, chances are that most of these complicated tasks are done manually, by hand. Wouldn't it be ideal to automate these management tasks with software, in order to improve the efficiency of the process? That's exactly what network management software (NMS) does.

Ethernet Enables The Smart Grid
Author: Bill Wotruba, Belden Industrial Solutions, Director of Networking and Connectivity Products
Posted: 02/23/2010
The electrical power generation, transmission and distribution system has survived for decades with limited intelligence. But the emergence of independent power producers, green power sources and new regulatory regimes is making it imperative to add smarts to the grid.

The grid receives power from a variety of conventional and green power sources. The grid then distributes this power to industrial, commercial and residential consumers. Power flowing into the grid must be matched with power outflows as closely as possible on a real-time continuous basis.

When power inflows and outflows don't match, voltage fluctuations occur on the grid. Excess demand lowers voltages, eventually to problematic levels. Power storage can address part of the problem by temporarily boosting power supplied to the grid, but storage is both technically challenging and very expensive. A better approach is to match power flowing into and out of the grid based on real-time information and control systems.

These real-time information and systems necessarily rely on wired and wireless communication networks, and the de facto standard for these networks is Ethernet. Various Ethernet protocols and attendant hardware including switches, routers and connectors form the power grid communication backbone.

This white paper will first show how the electric utility landscape has changed over the past few decades, necessitating the smart grid. It will then be shown how Ethernet-based Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems can be used to monitor and control power flowing into and out of the grid. Finally, it will be shown how Ethernet-based SCADA systems can be used to match power inflows and outflows to keep the grid stable.

TIA-1005 Industrial Ethernet Cabling Standard
Author: Anixter
Posted: 10/28/2009
The Effect on the 10/100 Industrial Ethernet Switch Performance.

The Anixter Infrastructure Solutions Lab wanted to determine what effect the new TIA-1005 industrial cabling infrastructure standard would have on the data throughput performance of real Ethernet data packets running between SmartBits test cards and various manufacturers' 10/100 Ethernet switches in a real-world simulation. The test included five (5) different IP20-rated switches and three (3) different enterprise rack-mounted switches using various cabling channels made from both Category 5e and Category 6 cabling components and connector pairs that are allowable under the standard. The premise also asserts that the effect of the cabling channel interference will also vary from port to port and switch to switch because of the variable transmitter and receiver functionality.

How to Design a Low–Power Wireless Sensor Network
Author: Wim De Kimpe, CTO GreenPeak
Posted: 05/21/2009
Driven by the demand for “green” technology and better use of power, a new generation of extreme low power wireless networks is being developed for use in machine to machine networks, for industrial and control applications, as well as for health, security and other purposes. This article is about this new approach towards truly wireless networks – without any network cables or power lines.

By using systems that require very little power, it is possible to develop wireless networks that can last longer than their batteries and therefore require little or no maintenance over the life of the device, or a device that does not require any batteries at all, instead, using energy harvesting to provide the power required.

Before the era of wireless sensor communication, low-power was synonymous to low current consumption. The lower the milli-amp figure, the better the device was at low-power operation. It was all about how many or rather how few milli-amps the electronics consumed. Furthermore, when the device did not need to communicate, it was turned off, to be awoken when an alarm situation was raised or a periodic status update was called for. This technique is called duty cycling.

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Timeless Resources

The Network in Your Future In the Years Ahead, Users Will Expect Better, Faster, Cheaper Industrial Systems. Not Everything Is Possible, but Good Things Are Foreseen Industrial Networks Adopt Wireless More Than Less Wire: Wireless Networks Have Benefits Beyond Saving Money on Cabling Costs Search for a Single Spine Integrating Controls, Power, Security, Environmental and Enterprise Systems Is a Pain. Some Network Designers Are Pursuing a Single Backbone Approach

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