Industrial ethernet switches

Advantech has introduced four managed industrial ethernet switches with integrated 100 Mbps fibre-optic ports: the EKI-7554MI, EKI-7554SI, EKI-7559MI and EKI-7559SI.

The compact and industrially hardened switches offer traffic control for optimum network performance and security, along with rapid self-healing fibre-optic ring capabilities that ensure network uptime in adverse environments.

The EKI-7554MI and EKI-7554SI offer four 10/100Base-Tx ports and two 100Base-FX fibre ports, while the EKI-7559MI and EKI-7559SI offer eight 10/100Base-Tx ports and two 100Base-FX fibre ports.

All models are equipped with SC type optical fibre connections and are available in multimode (MI models) and singlemode (SI models) fibre configurations.

Additionally, these ruggedised switches feature an extended operating temperature range of -40 to 75°C.

With integrated fibre ports, they’re suitable for applications beyond the 100 m distance limitation of copper Cat5 cabling and in those requiring the total electrical isolation inherently provided by optical fibre.

To meet the real-time fault-tolerant needs of manufacturing, the dual fibre connections can be used to connect multiple managed switches in a self-healing ring configuration, which provides a secondary communications path in the event that the primary is interrupted. In addition to open standard spanning tree and rapid spanning tree protocol, the EKI-7000 family switches also support the company’s ultra-fast X-Ring, which guarantees recovery in less than 10 ms.

Another benefit of the EKI-7000 managed switches is advanced network traffic management. Using virtual local area networks, a physical network can be logically subdivided in multiple logical networks, improving performance and enhanced security.

With the rising popularity of ethernet/IP and other industrial protocols that use multicast messaging, IGMP snooping can direct these messages to only the participating devices, without flooding all the other devices with unnecessary multicast traffic.