Industrial Engineer · phase 5 of 16
PROFINET
Industrial Ethernet system maintained by PROFIBUS and PROFINET International for automation communication and real-time I/O.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- PROFINET is the industrial Ethernet standard from the PROFIBUS world, and the default network in Siemens plants. It carries cyclic I/O, drive control and diagnostics on standard Ethernet hardware.
- Example
- An S7 controller talks to remote I/O stations and to a SINAMICS drive over one PROFINET network. The drive receives its control word and speed setpoint every few milliseconds and answers with status and actual speed.
- Why it matters
- Devices are addressed by name rather than only by IP, and a swapped device inherits the name from its topology, which makes replacements easy and misconfiguration subtle. Its real time classes decide whether a network is good enough for motion.
- Hook
- Siemens country runs on this.
Word knowledge
How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.
In a sentence
During commissioning, the engineer assigns a PROFINET device name to the remote I/O coupler before the PLC establishes cyclic data exchange.
Letter by letter
- PRO Process taken from the opening letters of process
- FI Field taken from the opening letters of field
- NET Network taken from the opening letters of network
Where it came from
- Origin
- English technical coinage from clipped capitals in PROcess FIeld NETwork
- Entered the language
- 2001
- What changed
- Early styling included PROFInet; the official form later settled as PROFINET and became the base for names such as PROFINET IO, RT, and IRT.
How it is spelled
- Capitalisation
- Written PROFINET in all capitals, including mid-sentence.
- Plural and possessive
- Usually used attributively; write PROFINET networks for the plural and PROFINET's for the possessive.
- Out loud
- Said as a word, not spelled out.
Same family
- PROFIBUS
- PROFIsafe
- PROFIdrive
- PROFIenergy
Broken into chunks
-
PROFI
- PROFIBUS
- PROFIsafe
- PROFIdrive
- PROFIenergy
-
NET
- EtherNet/IP
- DeviceNet
- ControlNet
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 5: PLC Industrial Communications
The protocols that let controllers, drives and operator panels talk, plus the addressing and description files that make them agree on what was said.
