In previous articles and videos, we've shared some basic knowledge about industrial switches and MAC addresses, which we're sure you've all learned a lot. Recently, we've received a lot of feedback from our readers who want to understand how switches work, so we've compiled some information immediately.
An industrial switch, also called a switching hub, regenerates and processes information internally before forwarding it to a designated port. It possesses automatic addressing capabilities and switching functions. Because an industrial switch independently sends each data packet from the source port to the destination port based on the destination address, it avoids collisions with other ports. An industrial switch is a device that performs information exchange functions in a communication system.
In computer network systems, switches were introduced to address the weaknesses of the shared operating mode. Hubs are representative of the shared operating mode. If we compare a hub to a postman, then this postman is an illiterate "fool"—he doesn't know to deliver mail directly to the recipient based on the address on the letter; he simply distributes the mail to everyone and then expects the recipients to determine if it's theirs based on the address information!
Industrial switches, on the other hand, act as "smart" mail carriers—they possess a high-bandwidth backplane bus and an internal switching matrix. All ports of an industrial switch are connected to this backplane bus. When the control circuitry receives a data packet, the processing port looks up the address lookup table in memory to determine which port the NIC (Network Interface Card) with the destination MAC address (the hardware address of the network card) is connected to. The packet is then quickly forwarded to the destination port via the internal switching matrix. If the destination MAC address does not exist, the switch broadcasts it to all ports. After the receiving port responds, the switch "learns" the new address and adds it to its internal address table.
Okay, that concludes today's popular science lesson on industrial switches. If you have any questions about IoT communication, please leave a comment below or send us a private message.
