Company Announcement - Netshield South Africa has announced the availability of a range of Industrial Ethernet products, designed to assist industrial customers where networking equipment is exposed to extreme elements and environmental factors. The use of Industrial Ethernet devices is specifically required for businesses that require a more resilient solution because of the environment in which their Ethernet network runs. To this end, IE devices are fully equipped with rugged connectors, and boast switches that can withstand extended temperature, ideal for those in industrial environments as well as automation or process control.

“South Africa has a large industrial focussed industry where we see factories, smelters, heat treatment plants, manufacturing lines and even furnaces and packing plants,” states Inus Dreckmeyr, CEO at Netshield. “The components used in the plant process areas of these companies, must be able to function in environments where there are extreme temperatures, humidity as well as vibrations that exceed the ranges information technology equipment can usually work under.

“The use of fibre Ethernet in these IE environments reduces the problems usually associated to electrical noise and enables electrical isolation, which in turn helps prevent equipment damage,” adds Dreckmeyr. The Netshield Industrial Ethernet products include a range of: media converters, switches, Profibus, Modbus, Modbus Plus, ControlNet, DeviceNet, Data Highway Plus, RS‐485, Genius, Remote I/O, RS232/484, Reliance R‐Net, Analog: 4‐20mA, 0‐ 10V.

They are specifically designed to assist with the enablement and delivery of industrial fibre optical networking, serial device networking and communication, industrial Ethernet, video fibre transmission and networking, as well as industrial wireless networking.

With the advent of more intelligent manufacturing and automated plant processing systems, the need for always-on networking equipment is growing. With the Netshield IE range companies can ensure quality signal and packet transmission across their networks.

The full product line up is made up of:

• Unmanaged Industrial Fast Ethernet 5 port Switch (100M)
• Unmanaged Configurable Industrial Fast Ethernet 5 port Switch (100M)
• Unmanaged Industrial Gigabit Ethernet 5 port Switch (1000M)
• Unmanaged Industrial Fast Ethernet 8 port Switch (100M)
• Unmanaged Industrial Fast/Gigabit Ethernet Switch 10 ports (100M+1000M)
• Managed Industrial Fast Ethernet 8 port Switch (100M)
• Managed Industrial Fast/Gigabit Ethernet Switch 10 ports (100M+1000M)
• Unmanaged Industrial Fast/Gigabit Ethernet 8 or 4 port Switch with POE
• Managed Industrial Fast/Gigabit Ethernet 8 or 4 port Switch with POE
• Specialized and combination industrial switches - Managed Industrial Fast/Gigabit Ethernet 10 port Switch with additional 4 serial ports
• Rack mountable industrial switches - Managed and Unmanaged Industrial Ethernet rack mount 24GE/FE+4GE port Switch.

Some of these devices can be installed in a ring topology.

Use of these IE solutions in the network enables your business to take advantage of full-duplex standards and unique transmission methods that ensure that potential collisions will not affect transmission times.