Network communication technologies
Communications play a vital role in most industrial automation solutions, and Rockwell Automation's Integrated Architecture offers a variety of options. I have classified these options as primary network technologies (those that are actively used in modern implementations of a Logix system) and legacy network technologies (those that have been used frequently in the past but are not being installed in the new Logix control systems).
Primary network technologies
Today, Logix relies on the following three primary technologies for network communication:
DeviceNet
ControlNet
EtherNet/IP
Let's discuss each of them in detail.
DeviceNet
DeviceNet is designed specifically to communicate with and provide power to the lowest-level field devices. It can communicate with intelligent devices that support a DeviceNet module such as sensors, VFDs, valves, motors, and distributed I/O blocks. DeviceNet is convenient as it provides both signal and power to the device. However,...