Articles and News

Advantech offers a number of solution guides, product selection guides, catalogs and case studies - many are available in PDF format. The eAutomation Solutions Catalog introduces a full range of products, focusing on the following vertical sectors: Machine Automation, Power & Energy, Building Automation, Environment Monitoring Systems, Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Facility Management Systems.

Network and cyber security are very important to industrial systems because they can affect the production of the control system. A complex task requires the aid of experts with field experience. They can recommend solutions for each of the security focus areas such as OPC tunneling for firewalls. It is important to begin addressing security risks as soon as possible, before they affect production.

This paper describes the application of the Fieldgate HART to XML based field server and the open standard Fieldcare Field Device Tool (FDT) to gain on demand access to selected HART devices over wired and wireless Information Technology based Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN).

This article was provided by Parker Compumotor, written by John Guite, Product Planning Manager for Parker Automation - Compumotor Division. Parker Compumotor is a leader in the motion control industry providing solutions for factory automation needs. They takes a system approach to solving your application and build an integrated family of products to match your needs. For more information, please visit Compumotor's website at: http://www.compumotor.com.

As Ethernet evolved to incorporate twisted-pair cabling and star topology, a repeating hub was necessary in order to connect the various link segments together. With the introduction of switching hubs as a replacement for repeating hubs, network performance was enhanced by breaking up one collision domain into several collision domains.

In this paper, we discuss different recovery requirements for redundant solutions, as well as approaches to keeping redundant hardware and software architectures running reliably and at peak performance. The technology related to redundant solutions will also be considered.

With the immense interest in the Internet and the potential of attaching control networks to the Internet, the protocol stack of choice is TCP/IP because it provides the foundation for the Internet. This article addresses issues related to the IP portion of the TCP/IP stack as it applies to control networks.

The trend toward using Ethernet as the sole communications network for business and industry has raised concerns about security. While proprietary networks for building or factory automation have major drawbacks in terms of limiting information flow and higher cost, their separation from other systems provides a measure of protection against unauthorized access.

In response to the growing need to freely communicate with a wide range of devices, protocols that originated in the BA industry have evolved to deliver straightforward access to a broad range of BA devices. Today, many vendor-specific proprietary protocols have given way to a standardized protocol such as BACnet.