Although the idea of using Ethernet for industrial applications has been around for at least twenty years, it's only in the last ten that industrial Ethernet has become widely accepted. Connecting legacy serial devices to Ethernet was the first market demand, but later on as more and more PLCs and DCSs equipped with Ethernet ports running Ethernet-based protocols such as ProfiNet, Ethernet/IP, and Modbus/TCP became available, industrial Ethernet switches became an important factor in pushing the entire market to using industrial Ethernet. Read more