industrial//industrial communication//industrial Ethernet//industrial switch

An industrial switch is a network switch built for a control network, where frames must arrive on time, and it carries the traffic between a PLC and its devices in a cabinet on the plant floor. To an office switch, which prioritizes throughput, cost and general connectivity, it adds fast and deterministic recovery after a link failure (ring redundancy protocols), time synchronization, quality of service for control traffic, support and diagnostics for industrial protocols, redundant power, extended temperature range and mechanical ruggedness for a DIN rail in a cabinet. The philosophy shifts from how much traffic the switch can move to whether a frame will arrive on time: in automation, besides bandwidth, what matters is when the packet gets there (determinism).

An industrial switch is a network switch built for a control network, where frames must arrive on time, and it carries the traffic between a PLC and its devices in a cabinet on the plant floor. To an office switch, which prioritizes throughput, cost and general connectivity, it adds fast and deterministic recovery after a link failure (ring redundancy protocols), time synchronization, quality of service for control traffic, support and diagnostics for industrial protocols, redundant power, extended temperature range and mechanical ruggedness for a DIN rail in a cabinet. The philosophy shifts from how much traffic the switch can move to whether a frame will arrive on time: in automation, besides bandwidth, what matters is when the packet gets there (determinism).

The industrial switch is the hardware side of industrial Ethernet: PROFINET and EtherNet/IP behave as designed only when the switches between the PLC and its devices honor their timing. It speaks the same Ethernet as the office and is a different product: the IT switch is bought on ports and gigabits, the OT switch on milliseconds of recovery and years in a hot cabinet, and putting an office switch under a PROFINET line is how a plant discovers the difference.