As security and uptime concerns become more prevalent across the industrial landscape, the need for effective redundancy strategies in industrial applications has increased. Industrial engineers can now economically connect any device to GarrettCom(TM), Inc.'s new Magnum(TM) ESD42 Dual-Homing Switch to provide dual-network-access (dual-homing) capability at the edge of any industrial network - providing high-availability for critical monitoring and control devices.

Typical dual-homing applications include surveillance cameras, substation power relays, badge readers, production scanners, and mission-critical SCADA devices in manufacturing lines where unplanned interruptions can cost upwards of $1 million per minute. With models priced as low as $230, the ESD42 switch dedicates two peer ports to provide two network access points to protect against any single point of failure for those devices located at the edge of an industrial network. Detection of a media connection fault or an upstream switch failure simply causes the ESD42 to transfer upstream network activity to the other port - typically within 300 milliseconds.

GarrettCom's dual-homing Ethernet Switch allows the dual-homing function to be moved from the edge device into the ESD42 switch. Few manufacturers offer PLCs and IEDs with dual connectivity built in, and the rare dual-NIC devices available - typically computers and some SCADA devices - require complex software to manage the NIC-switching logic and have been prohibitively expensive for many applications.

"Older industrial connectivity options such as serial lines did not support redundancy," said Frank Madren, GarrettCom President. "As a result, the typical redundant solutions have been expensive and rare. Today the sophistication, scope, and security requirements of industrial applications have increased. Ethernet is much more accommodating to redundant topologies, and the timing is right for us to introduce plug-and-play dual-homing technology for cost-effective redundant connections wherever required in industrial applications," he said.

GarrettCom has adapted and updated dual-homing technology for industrial applications. To provide redundancy for any device on a network, it is simply plugged into one of the local-device ports of an ESD42 switch, while the two dual-homing Ethernet ports of the switch are connected upstream. GarrettCom's patent-pending technology will detect Link Loss (from a failed wire or a failed upstream switch) on the Operating Port and automatically switch all data transfers to and from the connected devices to the Standby Port (which then becomes the Operating Port).