Industrial Ethernet Switches and Media Converters
We may ask what’s the difference between an Industrial Ethernet Switch and a Media Converter. In essence they are similar, but the industrial ethernet switches will have more ports and more functionality in its software than the Media Converter may have. However if that additional functionality is not required and budgets are restricted a media converter makes an ideal alternative to a switch. An Industrial Media Converter converts Copper Ethernet to Fibre, using SFP’s (Short Form Pluggables) the same as an Industrial Switch. If you only require one or two Copper ports and don’t require high levels of network resilience, a Media Converter is a more effective product than an Industrial Switch. Case Communications media converters have one or two 10/100/1000Mbps PoE ports and one or two fibre ports, while switches tend to have 4 to 16 copper ports and 2 to 4 Fibre ports. These days both technologies make use of SFP’s to provide Fibre interfaces. In terms of the basic functions
