SIXNET 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.

SIXNET 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.

These advanced 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.

In addition, advanced message filtering is provided to prevent "broadcast storms" from slowing down or completely crippling your network.