Learn industrial ethernet at RMIT

RMIT University has teamed up with Belden Australia to offer training and certification in industrial ethernet, on-site anywhere in Australia and New Zealand and on-campus at RMIT.

According to Bruce Kendall Senior educator in RMIT's School of Engineering, Industrial ethernet is a rapidly evolving research for networking and communication. "It's vital to a range of industries, including oil and gas, metals and mining, water, food, road, rail and air transportation, power, manufacturing, and building automation."

According to Wikipedia, industrial ethernet - use of ethernet technologies fro automation and process control, is relatively new "Until recently, a PLC would communicate with a slave machine using one of several possible open or proprietary protocols, just as Modbus, Sinec H1, Profibus, CANopen, DeviceNet or FOUNDATION Fieldbus.

The link-layer protocol

"But [there has been] increased to use Ethernet as the link-layer protocol, with one of the above protocols as the application-layer By using standard ethernet, automation systems from different manufacturers can be interconnected throughout a process plant.

"Industrial ethernet takes advantage of the relatively larger marketplace for computer interconnections using Ethernet to reduce cost and improve performance of communications between industrial controllers."