Managed Switch Software Features

The EtherTRAK™ Industrial Ethernet Managed Switches combine a feature-rich suite of real-time network management capabilities with the long-term benefits of truly open systems. These advanced switches provide real-time performance with fast fault-tolerant network connections to keep your network going for the long haul. SIXNET is constantly working on the new software features and provides them through FREE software upgrades for the life of the product.

Fully Configurable with Any Web Browser
Use any web browser to configure a SIXNET Industrial Ethernet Managed Switch. The secure web server inside the switch makes configuring as easy as surfing the Internet. Just enter the IP address of the switch in the browser's address field and off you go. Both basic HTTP and secure HTTPS (encrypted messages) are supported. You can also configure the switch through a telnet (network), SSH (Secure Shell for encryption over a network), terminal (RS232) interface or CLI (command line interface).

Some of the many parameters that can be configured are the port settings. You can name your ports, enable/disable them, and set the speed, duplex and flow control to meet your exact needs. Or just leave them set for Auto and let the switch determine the best setting.

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Network Reliability with SNMP & RMON
SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol and RMON stands for Remote Monitoring. Both help ensure your network reliability by allowing network administrators to monitor and manage the Ethernet network. These advanced features are used to detect and diagnose problems and improve the overall performance of your Ethernet network. A long list of run-time network variables and statistics (called MIBs - Management Information Bases) are available to help you manage and optimize your network. Refer to the user manual for the list of supported MIBs. The SIXNET Industrial Ethernet Managed Switch supports SNMP versions 1, 2 and 3. SNMP v3 provides security through authentication and encryption to prevent unauthorized access. These switches can responds to requests from an SNMP master, or automatically initiate SNMP notifications (i.e. traps) on an event such as a link going down.

Redundancy with Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol
The Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) prevents unnecessary down-time by allowing managed switches to be connected in various network topologies that allow for redundant communication paths. The SIXNET industrial Ethernet managed switch supports the advanced Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol which allows for quick determination of network problems and fast switch-over to backup paths. The typical recovery time is less than 50 mS per "hop" or less than 500 mS for a typical ring network consisting of 10 managed switches. Also, RSTP is fully compatible with the original and slower Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). Get details on RSTP.

The most common of the redundant network topologies is the simple ring where the switches are connected in a loop configuration. In this scheme, each switch will determine the best primary and backup paths and block the backup path until when and if the primary path fails.

Priority Queuing with QoS, CoS...
SIXNET industrial Ethernet managed switches provide Priority Queuing (also called Traffic Prioritization) which ensures that your higher priority messages (such as I/O control data) always get delivered first. Standard Quality of Service (QoS), Class of Service (CoS) and ToS/DiffServ (Type of or Differentiated Service) mechanisms are used to prioritize, tag and untag your messages.

Traffic Segregation with VLANs
SIXNET industrial Ethernet managed switches support VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) to conveniently segregate your network devices into functional groups. This provides extra security by allowing devices to only talk to other devices within their VLAN. It also increases network performance by keeping traffic (especially broadcasts) within the appropriate VLAN so that devices in other VLANs aren't burdened with messages they don't need to hear. Plus it eliminates the need to run new cable if a device is moved to a different switch. All you need to do is configure what VLAN the device should be on.

IP Multicast Filtering with IGMP
SIXNET industrial Ethernet switches also support IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) for IP multicast filtering. This is required for some control networks such as EtherNet/IP, Foundation Fieldbus HSE and other devices such as video servers use IP multicast messages to broadcast their data over the network. This is efficient for getting the data to many video display clients but puts unnecessary burden on all the other devices in the network. To remedy this, IGMP enables the managed switches to automatically route these messages to only the appropriate ports. These switches can passively snoop (i.e. IGMP Snooping) on IGMP router queries and IGMP host reports to determine where to route the multicast messages. Or they can actively send their own queries in place of an IGMP router.

Broadcast Storm Message Filtering
SIXNET industrial Ethernet switches provide advanced message filtering to prevent "broadcast storms" from slowing down or completely crippling your network.

Security with Authentication and Encryption
SIXNET industrial Ethernet managed switches can ensure that your network is safe from intrusion by utilizing the advanced security features provided. The first level of defense is password protection. All interfaces (web via HTTPS, telnet, Secure Shell (SSH) or terminal) are protected by a username and password. Unauthorized users, those without the password, are blocked from making any changes to the switch. The second level of protection is message encryption. This ensure that your communications to the switch cannot be spied upon and thus compromised. Advanced encryption is available for SNMP communications using SNMPv3, the web interface using secure HTTPS which utilizes SSL (Secure Socket Layers) or TLS (Transport Layer Security), or by using Secure Shell (SSH). Of course, for the best protection, the switches allow you to disable those access methods that you do not intend on using.

Advanced Diagnostics such as Port Mirroring
SIXNET industrial Ethernet managed switches make it easy to keep your network running trouble free. A wide range of network statistics are readily available to see if messages are being lost or corrupted. These statistics can be polled via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) or you can let the switches report problems automatically as they occur using SNMP notifications (traps). Then port mirroring enables advanced troubleshooting to quickly find and fix networking issues. It makes it possible (using third party network analyzer software) to monitor the Ethernet messages on any port in the switch. Normally this is not possible due to the inherent nature of Ethernet switches in that they do not broadcast messages out all ports like an Ethernet hub. However, port mirroring allows the messages from one or more source ports to be copied to one or more target ports.

Easy Configuration Management
SIXNET industrial Ethernet switches make it easy for your to manage your switch configurations. Once your switch is configured as you like you can save a configuration "checkpoint" file to your computer. This file can be used to restore the switch to a known configuration or to quickly configure other switches that require the same settings. You can save as many configuration files as you like. The file can be easily saved or retrieved using a simple browse feature or it can use a TFTP server.

Additional Software Features

Set IP Per Port (Simple DHCP Server)
SIXNET industrial Ethernet switches may provide an IP address to one device on each network port. This feature may be turned on and off for the whole switch and individually controlled for each port. The switch responds to DHCP requests by providing a statically-configured IP address to the first device to request one. This feature allows you to easily swap or replace devices and the IP address will remain fixed.

NTP Server and Time zone
SIXNET industrial Ethernet switches can automatically retrieve the current time from an NTP server. If the switch is connected to the internet, it can use the public pool of NTP servers that includes 0.pool.ntp.org, 1.pool.ntp.org, etc. You can also define which time zone the switch resides in so that you get the local time.

CLI (Command Line Interface)
SIXNET industrial Ethernet switches can also be configured using a simple Command Line Interface (CLI). This text-based interface allows you to use your own code to manage the switch. It is especially useful in embedded applications. Please contact SIXNET for the CLI documentation.

A View to the Future with Linux IPm
The powerful IPm embedded-Linux engine is inside each
SIXNET industrial Ethernet managed switch. This truly open platform ensures the continued success of your systems by providing the following unique benefits:

• Upgrades are free forever – SIXNET is continuing to add features based upon customer requests.
• A unique 20-year support policy – made possible in part by the open-source Linux inside.
• It's like getting a free industrially hardened computer – with free applications development tools from SIXNET. What a great tool for OEMs and integrators!
• Leading software vendors have already announced plans to enhance SIXNET Managed Switches by adding network monitoring tools, an OPC interface to SCADA systems, and very interesting security management tools. (SIXNET supports third party developments!)

(Idea: Perform protocol conversions as messages
travel through these intelligent switches.)