The NET-Wars (Fieldbus wars reloaded)

Mar 30, 2016 / by Grid Connect Team

Industrial Ethernet fieldbus issues of the past are coming to life again in a new form. Large protocol interest groups and manufacturers of industrial equipment have a new platform to compete for revenue and to keep brand loyalty. Ethernet-based protocols are changing with time, many companies have similar protocol implementations as they essentially have been creating the same standard Ethernet connectors. The biggest issue at hand today is that there is no interoperability between software, for instance, Ethercat doesn’t connect with Profinet and Profinet doesn’t connect to Ethernet IP. Time Sensitive Networks (TSN), which is part of the IEEE standards association, is attempting to enhance Ethernet standards by making high accuracy time synchronization and seamless redundancy features of standard Ethernet. As industrial Ethernet continues to develop, the biggest concern is if security standards will be integrated into new protocol.