As an important data communication product, industrial Ethernet switches must be open and compatible with products from multiple manufacturers to ensure long-term stable and safe operation of the system. If you only rely on a certain manufacturer, the risk is extremely high. Therefore, based on scalability and compatibility considerations, full consideration should be given to mixing industrial Ethernet switches from different manufacturers to form a redundant ring network to lay a solid foundation for future network expansion. So, can industrial Ethernet switches from different manufacturers build a redundant ring network?

The answer is yes. Industrial Ethernet switches from different manufacturers can communicate with each other through the loop electrical port and the optical port.

⑴ Networking protocol

Relevant national standards, Guodian enterprise standards, and industry standards that are being formulated all clearly stipulate that “the network can be formed according to the needs of the power system, and the networking protocol should adopt international standard protocols: RSTP, MSTP, etc.”. Therefore, in addition to supporting the private Ring protocol with independent intellectual property rights developed by each manufacturer, the industrial Ethernet switch must also support RSTP and MSTP international standard ring network protocols. As long as the RSTP and MSTP international standard ring network protocols are adopted, industrial Ethernet switches from different manufacturers can form networks with topological structures such as star, ring, and tree.

⑵ physical layer

There is no problem in the interconnection and intercommunication of switches from different manufacturers at the physical level, as long as the media parameters are consistent, such as whether the industrial-grade optical fiber transceiver is single-mode or multi-mode, and the wavelength parameters of the optical fiber transceiver. To sum up, regardless of the networking protocol or the physical layer, switches from different manufacturers can communicate with each other when they form the same ring network.