EtherCAT HighlightsPerformance256 digital-I/Os in 12 µs1.000 digital-I/Os in 30 µs 200 analog-I/Os (16 Bit) in 50 µs, corresponding to 20-kHz sampling rate100 servo axes every 100 µs12,000 digital I/Os in 350 µs Topologyline, tree or star topologyup to 65,535 devicesnetwork size: almost unlimited (> 500 km)operation with or without switchescost-effective cabling: Industrial Ethernet patch cable (CAT5) twisted pair physical layer:Ethernet 100BASE-TX, up to 100 m between 2 devicesalternative: fibre-optic cable variants 50 to 2,000 mhot connect/disconnect of bus segments Address spacenetwork-wide process image: 4 Gbytedevice process image: 1 bit to 64 kbyte address allocation: freely configurabledevice address selection: automatically via software Protokolloptimised protocol directly within the Ethernet framefully hardware-implementedfor routing and socket interface: UDP datagramprocessing while passing distributed clock for accurate synchronisationtime stamp data types for resolution in the nanosecond rangeoversampling data types for high-resolution measurements Diagnosticsbreaking point detectionTopology View continuous “quality of line” measurement enables accurate localisation of transmission faults Interfacesswitch port terminal for standard Ethernet devicesfieldbus terminals for fieldbus devicesdecentralised serial interfaces communication gatewaysgateway to other EtherCAT systems Opennessfully Ethernet-compatibleoperation with switches and routers possible, but not requiredmixed operation with other protocols also possibleinternet technologies (Web server, FTP, etc.) compatible with the existing Bus Terminal rangeprotocol is published completelyEtherCAT is IEC, ISO and SEMI standard.