Scheduled traffic, preemption, and time sync on standard Ethernet — what TSN guarantees, what it still needs, and where it meets the fieldbus.
Industrial Networking
Plant-floor networks: switching, wireless, segmentation, and remote access.
How to divide a plant network into zones, control what crosses between them, and why flat OT networks keep making incident reports.
Three technologies that get compared as rivals but usually work as layers. What each one owns, and how to stop choosing between them.
The world's most common industrial protocol in its two dominant forms — framing, addressing, gateways, and the mistakes that break integrations.
PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, and TSN serve different masters. What each was designed for and how to tell them apart.
IndexOPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) — technology overview (opcfoundation.org)
The OPC Foundation's overview of the OPC UA architecture: platform-independent, service-oriented, with built-in security and extensible information modeling.
IndexModbus specifications and resources (modbus.org)
The Modbus Organization: current specifications for Modbus RTU, ASCII, and TCP, plus conformance and developer resources.
IndexODVA: EtherNet/IP and CIP technology (odva.org)
ODVA's technology pages covering EtherNet/IP, CIP, DeviceNet, and conformance testing for multi-vendor interoperability.
IndexEtherCAT technology introduction (ethercat.org)
The EtherCAT Technology Group's technical introduction: functional principle, distributed clocks, topologies, and performance figures.
IndexPROFINET & PROFIBUS International (profibus.com)
PROFIBUS & PROFINET International: specifications, profiles (PROFIdrive, PROFIenergy), certification, and technology news.
IndexNIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: Guide to OT Security (csrc.nist.gov)
NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: the current federal guide to OT security — architecture, risk assessment, controls, and incident response for ICS.
Terms in this topic
- Determinism
- Bounded, guaranteed timing — the point of real-time networks.
- IT/OT convergence
- Merging of IT and OT systems and organizations.
- Jitter
- Cycle-to-cycle latency variation; the enemy of control loops.