industrial//industrial communication//industrial Ethernet//PROFINET

PROFINET is the industrial Ethernet of the Siemens ecosystem, the Ethernet-era successor of PROFIBUS. It is an **expressive control network**, carrying not just numeric registers but structured devices, I/O, diagnostics and identity, with real-time classes that make communication far more deterministic than office Ethernet.

PROFINET is the industrial Ethernet of the Siemens ecosystem, the Ethernet-era successor of PROFIBUS. It is an expressive control network, carrying not just numeric registers but structured devices, I/O, diagnostics and identity, with real-time classes that make communication far more deterministic than office Ethernet.

Its real-time class schedules cyclic I/O traffic below TCP/IP, and its isochronous class synchronizes devices for motion; ordinary TCP/IP traffic coexists on the same wire for everything that is not time-critical (determinism).

It is the usual link between a Siemens PLC and its drives (VFD), remote I/O, robots and machinery; a robot controller from another brand joins a Siemens cell by speaking it.

A 2006 PROFIBUS DCS and a modern PROFINET PLC can share a plant for decades, which is the kind of coexistence a gateway has to bridge (edge gateway).