Why take risks with your control network?
August 2006
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
Contemporary Controls offers three new managed features to safeguard against risks to control networks. "The reason being," says R&D manager Bennett Levine, "that the popularity of Ethernet employed in the control system is gaining strength every day. Most users are of the opinion that you can simply connect your devices to the office network. The logic behind this viewpoint is that both the control devices and the office devices communicate via Ethernet, and they can simply be connected together. However, there are considerations to keep in mind."
After discussion with the company's customers, engineers designed three new features associated with their EISX_M, EICP_M and EISB_M managed switches. These features - rate limiting, port locking and overlapping VLANs - prevent risks when interconnecting office and factory networks, says Levine.
The rate limiting feature lets the individual select a maximum traffic level (from 64 Kbps to 100 Mbps) so varied communications operate properly - even allowing the control network to function in the event the office network has a catastrophic problem. "For example," says Levine, "an individual can use this feature to limit the amount of traffic your office network can send to your control network." One related feature of rate limiting is broadcast storm control which the company's switches also support.
The second feature is port locking. This is another method of controlling the traffic that comes from the office network. Port locking limits what devices can communicate through a specific port of the switch.
"For example," Levin explains, "you can employ this port locking to only allow certain computers in the office network to communicate with the control network. This can help restrict your problems to a few office devices and not the entire office network."
The third feature is known as overlapping VLANs. It allows a few devices to be shared between the office and the control network. Office traffic is eliminated from the portion of the control network that does not need to communicate with the office network. Levine says if a scada system needs to communicate with both the office network and the control network, an 'overlapping VLAN' could be used to keep office traffic from all control devices except for the scada system. "Any problems in the office network will not affect the rest of the control network," he adds.
Further reading:
EtherCAT interoperability removes industrial networking barriers
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
Selecting the right communication technology is one of the most important decisions engineers make, and interoperability helps with that decision. Key development tools and standards ensure interoperability among many EtherCAT devices and manufacturers.
Read more...
Condition monitoring to go
Turck Banner Southern Africa
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
Anyone who wants to efficiently monitor the climate in control cabinets will find a comprehensive range of control cabinet monitors for the DIN rail in Turck Banner’s cabinet condition monitoring family.
Read more...
Affordable building management system product range
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
Schneider Electric has unveiled its EasyLogic Building Management System range, designed for basic building architectures, to the local marketplace. This is a complete and cost-effective range of field controllers and sensors that are both easy to install and scalable.
Read more...
Flexible EtherCAT communication interface for DALI-2
Beckhoff Automation
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
The EL6821 EtherCAT Terminal from Beckhoff allows up to 64 DALI/DALI-2 slaves and 64 DALI-2 input devices to be connected. The TwinCAT 3 System Manager makes it easy to configure and parameterise DALI devices flexibly.
Read more...
EtherCAT-based control technology for building automation
Beckhoff Automation
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
Modern non-residential buildings place many high demands on building automation. This can be optimally implemented with EtherCAT-based control technology from Beckhoff, which provides an efficient central automation architecture thanks to ultra-fast data communication.
Read more...
PC-based control for university studies
Beckhoff Automation
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
The IDEA box developed at Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences is designed to introduce students to the topic of Industry 4.0 in a simple and practical way. At the core of the corresponding demo case is PC-based control from Beckhoff.
Read more...
A new standard in high-speed Ethernet communication
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
The TXMC897 module from TEWS Technologies supports a range of Ethernet standards and speeds, making it suitable for diverse applications, including the defence, industrial, and IIoT markets.
Read more...
Data-driven battery production
Turck Banner Southern Africa
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
The availability of high-performance batteries at moderate prices is one of the most important factors for the success of electromobility. As a long-standing automation partner to the automotive industry, Turck Banner supports the major battery manufacturers with its know-how.
Read more...
Bring critical temperature data to your condition monitoring system
Turck Banner Southern Africa
Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
Data conversion just got easier. Turck Banner converters are compact, simple add-ons that seamlessly fit into your factory applications. You can take various types of signals such as discrete, analogue and many others, and convert them to protocols like IO-link, PICK-IQ, PWM/PFM, and Modbus.
Read more...
Case History 190: Measurement problem ruins level control.
Michael Brown Control Engineering
Editor's Choice Fieldbus & Industrial Networking
The widely held belief in many plants that tuning will solve all base layer control problems is completely fallacious. Bad tuning is generally not the main reason for loops to perform badly. It is important when performing optimisation that all elements in a loop are considered, in addition to the control strategy, before even thinking of tuning.
Read more...
printer friendly version