Designing a cost effective and highly reliable industrial Ethernet network

Industrial networks have many demands beyond those of traditional business networks. Engineers and others who design Ethernet networks for these applications must follow correct installation procedures and must select network equipment that will function in industrial environments with little or no downtime.

March 28, 2012

Power supply configuration, proper network grounding, selection of network topology, and configuration of network switches are critical when Ethernet is used in industrial applications. Design techniques such as port-by-port addressing can significantly reduce the time required to replace field devices by eliminating the need for maintenance personnel to manually input IP addresses.