Key highlights
- Ethernet-APL delivers 10 Mbps communication speed, enabling faster configuration, diagnostics and data throughput.
- It maintains Ex-ai intrinsically safe compliance, which is essential for hazardous process environments, ensuring engineers can upgrade without compromising plant safety.
Ethernet-APL is proving that its physical layer is Ex-ai intrinsically safe (IS), runs much faster at 10 Mbps compared to digital fieldbuses at 31.4 kbps or analog signals with HART at 1.2 kbps, and is increasingly and trusted and accepted by users, according to Christoph Adam, head of product management at Softing Industrial. However, he adds it’s also a two-wire, Ethernet network that must address network vulnerabilities, and prevent cyber-probes, -intrusions and -attacks from reaching its field devices.
“It seems like everyone is integrating the ISA/IEC 62443 cybersecurity standard because the European Union’s (EU) Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is about to go live in 2027,” says Adam. “Suppliers and users are getting their processes and products certified, looking at their network topologies, doing threat modeling, making sure their ports are locked, and establishing firewalls around their subnetwork zones and devices. The good news is Ethernet-APL, single-pair Ethernet (SPE), Profinet and other Ethernet-based protocols can use their connectivity and capabilities to help with cybersecurity issues, so we’re looking at integrating more cybersecurity in our solutions as well.“
Just as effective cybersecurity requires site and risk assessments, Adam reports that implementing Ethernet-APL also needs users to examine their network topologies and evaluate which new designs and tools will be the most suitable for their processes and facilities.
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“Switching from point-to-point analog to digital fieldbuses were big changes, and added some complexity for users due to breaks in physical networks and the need to integrate gateways or proxies in their topologies with additional set up effort,” adds Adam. “Likewise, our PA Gate switch has been converting Profibus-PA protocols communications to Profinet for 15 years, and while it means less wiring complexity in the long run, it also requires users to learn how to do their diagnostics differently, so they can get more than just one or two values.
“Implementing Ethernet-APL is simpler, but it’s a change, too, and all of these changes require learning some new tasks and tools. Now, APL is going to make a lot more data types available. One of the benefits is, where traditional parameterization with HART during setup and configuration took 10-15 minutes, APL will only take 10-15 seconds.”
