Unlike office and home Ethernet, which has long been known, Industrial Ethernet requires more specialized knowledge and practical experience. If you are installing or using an industrial Ethernet network, you must understand the five things about cabling, signal quality, ground loops, switches, and communications. Truck Led Display,Mobile Led Billboard,Truck Mounted Led Screen,Truck Led Screen ShenZhen Megagem Tech Co.,Ltd , https://www.megleddisplay.com
Like all networks, the advantages and disadvantages of cables directly affect the quality of industrial Ethernet. In addition to high electromagnetic interference (EMI), industrial environments often have some level of temperature, dust, humidity, and other influencing factors that are not common in home and office environments.
So, how do you choose a cable? In the office, commercial grade cables, such as Category 5 cables, are better suited for 10MB networks, while Category 5e cables are suitable for 100MB networks. Category 6 or better cables can be used for host or device connections in an industrial environment, as described in the ANSI/TIA-1005 standard. Category 6 cables enable a 1GB network within 100 meters and a 10GB network within 55 meters. Category 6e cables can achieve a 10GB network within 100 meters.
Category 6 cables are less susceptible to crosstalk and external EMI noise than Category 5 and Category 5e cables. Industrial Ethernet cables are designed to withstand the physical erosion of cables in harsher industrial environments. When installing Category 6 cables, ensure that the RJ45 interface and socket can also reach Category 6. The best way to use it is to use a pre-wired patch cable and install the connector in the factory for short-distance wiring. Use sockets for long distance wiring.
Some applications require shielding, but if the shielded cable is not properly installed, it will be counterproductive.
Shielded Ethernet cables perform better in EMI environments when the protective sleeve is exceeded. Good grounding is the key to using shielded cables. A ground reference point is the key in the key. Multiple ground connections form a ground loop, and differences in potential at different ground connections introduce noise into the cable.
The ground loop can cause great damage to your network. To solve this problem, use only the grounded RJ45 connector on one end of the cable and the insulated RJ45 connector on the other end to eliminate the possibility of ground loops.
If the Ethernet cable is cross-wired with the power cable, the angle of intersection is quite interesting. Separate the parallel Ethernet cable from the power cable by at least 8 to 12 inches. If the voltage is high or the side-by-side distance is long, the separation distance should be larger. If the Ethernet cable is routed within a metal trench or casing, adjacent trenches or bushings must be connected together for electrical continuity.
In general, Ethernet cables are as far away as possible from devices that generate EMI, such as motors, motor control equipment, lighting equipment, and live conductors. On the panel, the Ethernet cable is at least 2 inches apart from the connector. Follow the recommended cable bend radius when the cable is away from sources of EMI interference.
Simply put, don't use a hub in an industrial Ethernet environment. A hub is nothing more than a multiport repeater. If the hub is excluded, the only remaining options are managed switches and unmanaged switches. Managed switches are better, and of course they are more expensive than unmanaged switches.
Every device on the network has a unique identifier, which is what we call a MAC address, which is the key to better recognition than a hub. When the switch is just powered on, its initial performance is no different from that of the hub, and all the communication content is broadcasted. However, as the devices on the network transmit information on different ports of the switch, the switch starts monitoring the communication content and identifies it. Which MAC address is associated with which port, and then identifies it in the MAC address table. Once the switch discovers that the device's MAC address is connected to a particular port, it monitors the information that points to that MAC address and then sends that information only to that particular address.
Industrial Ethernet networks have three communication types. Point-to-point unicast communication, one-to-many multicast communication, and a little bit of broadcast communication to all nodes.
After the switch's MAC address table is established, the managed switch and the unmanaged switch handle the unicast communication and broadcast communication in no way. In general, the broadcast frequency is controlled at 100 broadcasts per second at a bandwidth of 100 MB. For any network, there will be more or less broadcast communication. An example is that the print server periodically gives broadcast notifications on the network.
One of the main differences between managed switches and unmanaged switches is how they handle multicast traffic. Multicast communication typically comes from smart devices piggybacked on the factory process network, using a connection-oriented manufacturer/user model-based technology. The connection in this case is simply the relationship between two or more nodes on the network.
In order to receive the information in the group, the device must join the multicast communication group, and all members of the group can receive the data. If you just send data to the team, you don't need to be a member of the team. In the manufacturer/user model, the main problem with multicast communication is that as the number of team members increases, communication information grows exponentially. At this point, you need to use a managed switch.
Managed switches can turn on Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) snooping. It works like this, when the IGMP snooping feature is turned on, it sends out a broadcast communication to determine the members of any multicast group. Using this information, along with the established MAC address table, the managed switch can send multicast traffic only to members of the multicast group. Unmanaged switches treat multicast data and broadcast data in the same way, sending data to each node.
Managed switches are the best value for money if your network uses manufacturer/user technology or uses multicast communication. #p#分页头#e#
There are many other reasons to consider using managed switches. This class of switches typically provides fault logging, which controls the speed of each port, with redundancy settings and port mirroring. These additional capabilities ensure more precise control of network behavior and can be very valuable in troubleshooting. We know that for some nodes on the network, failures are unavoidable.
When there is a problem with network performance, the switch is first checked, although for most network performance problems, the switch is rarely the core of the problem. A switch is the most likely node in a system to operate. It typically operates at 10 to 50 times the rate of operation of other network components.
While there is always a good software to help you troubleshoot network problems, most of them only see broadcast and multicast traffic. This is actually quite reasonable, as many performance issues often result from unrestricted multicast traffic or excessive broadcast traffic. If you need to check for unicast traffic for some reason, port mirroring is the only way.
If there is no multicast communication on the network, then there is no problem with using an unmanaged switch. On small, simple networks with only a few devices, many people use unmanaged switches. Sometimes these two types of switches can be combined to put some remote devices on an unmanaged switch for unified feedback to the managed switch. For those networks with a large number of nodes, if cost is not a key factor, then choose a managed switch. It is a wise choice to think about it afterwards.