ControlNet™ is a real-time, control-layer network that provides high-speed transport of both time-critical I/O data and messaging data, upload/download of programming and configuration data, and peer-to-peer messaging on a single physical media link. Deterministic and repeatable, ControlNet’s high-speed (5 Mbits/sec) control and data capabilities significantly enhance I/O performance and peer-to-peer communications to ensure dependable, synchronized, and coordinated real-time performance.
ControlNet’s media access method takes full advantage of the Producer/Consumer model to allow multiple controllers to control I/O on the same wire. This provides a significant advantage over other networks, which allow only one master controller on the wire. ControlNet also allows multicast of both inputs and peer-to-peer data, thus reducing traffic on the wire and increasing system performance.
ControlNet is highly deterministic and repeatable to enable reliable predictions of when data will be delivered and ensure that transmit times are constant and unaffected by devices connecting to or leaving the network. These features are further enhanced with user-selectable I/O and controller-interlocking update times to match application requirements.