Enhancement of Industrial Ethernet Performance Using Multicasting/VLAN techniques

This paper studies Industrial Ethernet performance under different circumstances using the network simulation package (OPNET).It was assumed that industrial Ethernet is used to connect the different components of an electrical substation automation system. In the first simulation case, unicast transmission procedure is assumed. Unicast consumes CPU power and resources of the industrial node. In addition, if the packet production rate is high, queuing delay is created at different network layers of the industrial node. All this adds extra delay to the total value of the latency. Then, a comprehensive study to the effect of using multicasting was made. Multicasting/VLAN techniques are used to enhance the real time performance of industrial Ethernet by modifying packet generation process. Industrial nodes use multicasting technique to generate a packet forwarded to all members of a multicast group in the same time. Meanwhile, VLAN technique is used to forward the multicast traffic to its intended destinations only.