ELE5001 Industrial Communications Protocols

Task:

You are a part of an engineering team in the early stages of the design of an industrial automation system. As part of the preliminary design work, you have been tasked to produce a short report for the other members of the team outlining the technical differences between the following CIP communications protocols that are likely to be used in the project:

DeviceNet,

ControlNet, and

Ethernet/IP 

The technical information should provide your fellow team members with details that will be important when they need to select or use a protocol for a specific application. These might include (where available):

Brief History

Typical Applications

Strengths

Limitations

Physical Media

Packet Format

Maximum Run Length

Number of Nodes

Data Rates (Typical and Maximum)

Possible Topologies

Anything else you consider pertinent.

You are able to decide how best to present this information, but it must be clear and simple to navigate. All data is to be referenced. Note that sources such as Wikipedia alone are generally not considered adequate for this task.