PROFINET Profiles, Additional Layers of Functionality
PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI) working groups develop Application profiles to ensure the openness, interoperability, and interchangeability of devices. PROFINET Application Profiles are vendor-independent specifications. They are implemented into PROFINET devices to enable the uniform behavior of devices from different manufacturers. These Application Profiles relate to device families or unique industry sector solutions. Application Profiles…
PROFINET Redundancy: Device, Controller, Network, and Media
Redundancy mechanisms turn a reliable system into a highly available system, adding extra components or functionality to maintain reliable operation through a number of failures. PROFINET allows you to build a reliable network according to your specific requirements. Specifically, PROFINET offers four redundancy options: Device Redundancy, Controller Redundancy, Network Redundancy, and Media Redundancy. Device Redundancy…
PROFIsafe: Functional Safety Over the Bus
Functional safety (fail-safe) is the overall part of safety which aims to prevent hazards due to the incorrect functioning of industrial machinery. Traditionally, functional safety systems relied on separately wired circuits that are expensive to build, commission, and maintain. Nowadays, functional safety can be done over the fieldbus, shifting from safety in hard relays to…
Security Classes for PROFINET (coming soon!)
As digitalization spreads to all levels and applications in manufacturing, IT security gains more importance. Previous security concepts relied primarily on isolating production plants from external users and networks. But in the nowadays connected environment, security strategies must take another approach. PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI) is working towards implementing a state of the art…
PROFINET Media Redundancy
Ring topologies establish media redundancy. If a wire breaks in one section of the ring, there is a secondary connection to the network. The image below shows an example of a ring topology within a network with multiple topologies. Generally, Ethernet should not be connected in a ring without performing some sort of management. Without…
PROFINET iPar Server – Overview and Description
Aside from the mandatory characteristics in each PROFINET device, PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI) defines a list of optional features. These features are not required in all PROFINET devices; nonetheless, they can provide tremendous added value. This post describes one of those PROFINET optional features: the iPar Server. Since this feature is optional, users must…
PROFINET vs Ethernet: Definitions and a Comparison
What is the difference between PROFINET and Ethernet? Can you give us a PROFINET vs Ethernet comparison? We get these questions quite often. And they are kind of difficult to answer because PROFINET and Ethernet are complementing technologies, not competing technologies. This short post will illustrate the comparison between PROFINET and Ethernet. Let’s start by…
PROFINET Conformance Classes
All PROFINET products are developed according to international standards and certified by PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI). Every PROFINET device has a defined set of features that are mandatory based on its conformance class. There are three PROFINET conformance classes: A, B, and C. Conformance Class A (CC-A) is the most basic, while C (CC-C)…
PROFINET Optional Features – Q&A Block
Did you miss the PROFINET Optional Features webinar? We got you covered. You can watch the whole webinar recording and go over the slide set here. This webinar explains several PROFINET optional features, such as Device Redundancy, Shared Device, Dynamic Reconfiguration, Fast Startup, iPar Server, and Time Stamping. During the live session, we got several…
Dynamic Reconfiguration
The process industries have many challenging production requirements. For example, in some applications, systems must run continuously without interruptions; not even emergency stops are possible. For those scenarios, PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI) specified a PROFINET feature to ensure continuous processes. Such feature is Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR). DR allows users to reconfigure, insert, remove, or…