Industrial Leased Line Modems
Industrial modems receive information from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) through phone lines (DSL), coaxial cables or optical fiber and converts it into a digital signal. This digital signal can now be utilized by an industrial router to get the information to connected devices through Ethernet cables or Wi-Fi. The speed and reliability of the information transmission can vary greatly depending on the type and design of the modem and router.
Leased lines are dedicated, fixed-bandwidth data connections that allow businesses to have a high-quality, reliable Internet connection with guaranteed upload and download speeds, uptime and resilience. “Leased” refers to the connection which is rented by the Internet service provider directly to a business, resulting in a service that is above and beyond what standard broadband provides.
MuLogic Leased Line LLM-336 Series modems are voiceband modems for data communication over 2-wire and 4-wire leased lines or copper lines at line data rates up to 33.6 kbps. The modems are designed for industrial applications and support full and half duplex operation modes. They can be used on point-to-point and multipoint lines and SCADA and Modbus RTU communication are implemented.
Basics of Switches, Routers & Hubs
Ethernet hubs, switches and routers connect computers to networks, devices and other computers.
Ethernet hubs are the least intelligent of the three devices. They simply take any message that is received and transmits it to every other device connected to that hub. For example, if CPU 1 on a network wants to send a message to CPU 5, it will send that message through the hub.The hub will then take that message and send it out to every connected device on that hub regardless of the intended target. When CPU 5 receives that message and wants to respond, it will send its response through the hub which sends it to every connected device. Ethernet hubs do not manage any data that is sent and tend to bog down networks. They also do not offer much security for the network. For these reasons, Ethernet hubs are are being replaced with network switches.
Switches transmit data from one device to another on the same network. Unlike a hub, switches use a switch table to learn where data came from and where to send it. Switch tables store Mac addresses and device ports. By storing this data, a switch can operate more efficiently than a hub, greatly reducing the traffic within the network.
Routers transfer data between devices while learning the location of those devices within the network. They are also a junction between two or more networks. An example of this would be a home router where the home network is connected to the Internet. Another example would be when the router connects two or more networks with different business functions. In addition to connecting two or more networks, a router offers important security features that help protect the network.