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 the media converter supports most of the basic functions such as Auto-Negotiation (ie MDI / MDIX) Full or half duplex, IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol (to aid video over the network by setting up Multicasting), Broadcast control, and Jumbo 9KB frames.

The Case Communications media converters also support Redundant Power Supplies and a Relay Output to indicate a power or port failure.

One benefit a switch has in its ability to self-heal in the event of a network failure by using two fibre paths out of the network and having the ability to re-route rapidly in the event of failure. Media Converters on the other hand tend to be on a spur with a single Fibre link.

Industrial Network Switches also tend to be managed and to support SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) allowing the switch to send an SNMP Trap in the event of an event in the switch and to also be monitored by an SNMP Network Management System such as CaseView.

Configurations can be up and downloaded to a switch while a media converter generally plug and go without the need of configuration.

Generally industrial media converters will be used to extend a network of Industrial Switches by adding a spur to the switch network, allowing the switch to which its connected to keep an eye on the link.

Media converters are very cost-effective and reliable and used in the right locations a great benefit to a network.

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