Performance evaluation and application of IPX network protocol in flexible manufacturing system

This paper describes the implementation of the NETBIOS and the Novell's IPX protocols for the server independent, peer-to-peer communications with the objective for real time control applications in manufacturing systems. The performance evaluation based on the Ethernet data link and the connectionless communications is presented. It is shown quantitatively here how much more speed efficiency the IPX implementation can offer as compared to the NetBIOS implementation. This work demonstrates that only a few of the basic, easily available, and well-developed network protocol driver and shell files are all that are necessary for use as a building block for various routines suitable for real time control applications. A network configuration for a PCB assembly process involving robots and machines running at varying speeds is briefly described as an application example.