What is the Difference Between Industrial Switch and General Switch?

1.What is industrial switch

Industrial switch, also known as industrial Ethernet switch, is applied to Ethernet switch equipment in industrial control field. The industrial switch has carrier-level performance characteristics and can withstand harsh working environment. The product range is rich and the port configuration is flexible, which can meet the needs of various industrial fields. The product adopts wide temperature design, with protection grade no less than IP30, supports standard and private ring network redundancy protocol, has good openness, wide application, can adapt to low temperature and high temperature, strong electromagnetic interference resistance, salt fog resistance, and strong seismic resistance. Generally, large-scale network communication systems such as high-speed monitoring systems, water conservancy and power generation systems must use industrial grade switches.

2. Difference between industrial switch and general switch

Because the industrial switch is generally used in industrial production, its appearance and installation form are diverse. According to the different applications, it is required to be waterproof, dust-proof, anti-seismic, and anti-electromagnetic interference. In addition, the reliability requirements are also very high, and it needs to operate 24 hours without interruption for a long time. Some automatic control applications require low forwarding delay, some require redundant power supply, DC24V power supply, etc.

Ordinary switches are mostly used in enterprise office scenes. They are usually placed indoors, with little interference from external natural factors. Therefore, the requirements for waterproof and shockproof are not high. On the contrary, they are more reliable and can operate 24 hours without interruption for a long time. At the same time, because it needs to carry more business applications, it has more requirements for bandwidth, interfaces, etc. Generally speaking, it is mainly more than 8 ports.

It is because of the different use scenarios that there are great differences between industrial switches and ordinary switches in terms of appearance, function and performance

2.1 Difference in appearance

In order to maintain better heat dissipation and prevent corrosion in harsh outdoor environment, industrial switches often use aluminum alloy shells with better heat dissipation and corrosion resistance. Most of the ordinary switches will use sheet metal shells, and most of the household switches are plastic shells

2.2 Different functions

Although both are switches, the data exchange functions are basically the same. However, industrial switch is mainly used for real-time Ethernet data transmission in complex industrial environment. In the design of Ethernet, because it uses carrier sense multiplexing collision detection (CSMA/CD mechanism) and is applied in complex industrial environment, its reliability is greatly reduced, resulting in the Ethernet can not be used. The industrial Ethernet switch adopts the storage conversion switching mode, improves the Ethernet communication speed at the same time, and has built-in intelligent alarm design to monitor the network operation, so as to ensure the reliable and stable operation of Ethernet in the harsh and dangerous industrial environment.

2.3 Different performance requirements

Compared with ordinary exchange, industrial exchange has higher requirements in wide temperature design, degree of protection, voltage and electromagnetic resistance.

  • For example, the temperature design of industrial switches needs to meet the range of – 40~85 ° C, while ordinary switches only need to meet the range of 0-55 ° C
  • Protection grade requirements: IP40 protection grade is required for industrial switches, and IP20 for general switches
  • Voltage: The industrial switch has a wide range of working voltage and supports multiple options, such as – 9~56VDC power supply, ADC220V power supply, and common switch has high voltage requirements. The general switch is basically single power supply, while the industrial switch power supply is generally dual power supply for mutual backup.
  • Electromagnetic aspect: Industrial Ethernet switch has strong anti-electromagnetic interference ability, which is generally above EMC3 level, while ordinary switch will not have higher requirements in this aspect

In addition, there are many other performance requirements for industrial switches. For example, the RG-IS2712G industrial switch of Ruijie Network adopts fanless cooling circuit design, supports working ambient temperature of – 40~85 º C, IP40 protection level, lightning protection voltage>=8KV, anti-vibration protection power supply design, electromagnetic interference level 4 standard, shock and vibration resistance, and the equipment can operate stably and reliably even in harsh environment.

In the case of changeable outdoor weather and complex landform, the industrial switch can have a service life of 10 years+due to its unique design and performance, while the ordinary switch may be shortened by half. Therefore, industrial switches and general switches need to be selected and used according to different use scenarios to achieve the best experience of the network.

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