esd's Switch16/COM3 is equipped with VLANs allowing the division of a physical network into multiple logical sub-networks without the need to alter the physical installation. This leads to a reduction of broadcast messages and provides a better logical separation of different network protocols
Numerous common Industrial Ethernet protocols such as PROFINET, EtherCAT or Ethernet/IP enable the use of VLAN. esd's EtherCAT Master supports VLAN, too, and therefore allows communication with various independent EtherCAT segments while using only one single network port. Communication with 1 Gbit/s between the EtherCAT master and the switch offers the advantage of connecting up to 10 EtherCAT slave segments to the switch (100 Mbit/s per segment). Our Ethernet switch, the Switch16/COM3, allows configuration of static VLANs for its ports.
For the vertical integration within the automation pyramid the netintegrator Switch 16/COM3 was designed with 16 ports as managed switch for 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX and 100BASE-T. The module has three serial interfaces that can be accessed for example via a PC. The assignment of the 16 ports is done by the webserver and the serial interfaces can be configured as RS232, RS422 and RS485. The switch is equipped with an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU acting as COM-Server for the serial ports.
