The population of variable frequency drives in modern industrial facilities has escalated significantly in recent years. And no wonder—by adjusting motor speed and voltage to meet changing real-time process demands on the fly, VFDs help deliver valuable benefits such as increased energy efficiency, more precise process control and reduced wear and tear on costly equipment. Unfortunately, benefiting from a VFD isn’t always quite as easy as simply plugging one in.

In recent years, many industrial backbone network users have found themselves in a no-win situation. The familiar circuit-switched SONET and SDH networks they’ve relied upon for decades are falling rapidly behind in meeting their growing needs for video, data and other high bandwidth-demanding applications. Yet, the most common practical packet-switched alternative—for many, IP/MPLS—is a protocol clearly intended for more complex carrier networks. It’s proving to be too costly, complicated and feature-poor for the specific needs of utilities, transportation, pipeline and other industrial users operating their own internal network backbone.

What is EIA 485?

It is important to remember that EIA-485 is not an application or protocol but a balanced transmission interconnect standard that specifies the electrical characteristics of drivers, receivers and transceivers.

Let's face it, we Operations Technology (OT) folks can sometimes get a little bit smug when the news of the latest IT cyber security event hits the airwaves. “We don't store credit card information or social security numbers,” some might be thinking, “so no one would be interested in targeting us.”

Ethernet has been serving network operators well for nearly three decades, and while it has certainly developed a great deal over the years, its most “revolutionary” evolutionary jump is emerging right this minute. The new technology enhancement is called “Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN).” Although its strong value-adding functions are still being proved out (very successfully!) in testbed and demo networks, real-world network operators can begin benefitting from the technology right away.