Industrial Ethernet’s Role Becoming Ever More Important in China

工業以太網在中國市場的地位愈加重要

The Chinese market for industrial Ethernet & Fieldbus Technologies grew by 18 million nodes in 2012. More than 3 million nodes used Ethernet and the remainder used Fieldbus technology。

2012年，中國市場的工業以太網和現場總線技術增加了1800萬個節點，其中超過300萬個節點應用了以太網技術，其余的則是現場總線技術。

Although Fieldbus has a large base of new connected nodes in China, the usage of Fieldbus is not as common as in developed countries such as Germany or the United States. This is mainly because Chinese customers are encountering networking technology much later than those developing countries.

盡管現場總線在中國的新增連接節點數量較多，但現場總線的應用還是沒有德國或者美國等發達國家普及。這主要是因為中國用戶應用網絡技術遠遠晚于其他發展中國家。

However, the growing speed of Ethernet is quite considerable in China and we think it is a great opportunity for Chinese customers to upgrade their automation system under current market condition. Customers will just jump from old Fieldbus Technologies direct to Ethernet now and actually many of them are doing right now.  The Chinese market is currently engaged in extensive upgrading and new infrastructure construction， and that will require a great deal of Ethernet applications.

然而，以太網在中國的發展速度非常迅速，我們認為，這是中國用戶在目前的市場條件下，升級自動化系統的良機。 用戶將直接從舊的現場總線技術跳到現在的以太網，實際上，也確有不少的用戶正在這樣做。中國市場目前正在推動產業升級以及新一輪的基礎設施建設，這也將產生大量的以太網應用。

In China, international brands are quite influential. This is also true for industrial networking protocols because most of them having their supporting companies. For example, the most popular Fieldbus protocols in China are PROFIBUS and CC-Link, which are developed and promoted by Siemens and Mitsubishi separately, which command large market share in China.

在中國，國際品牌都相當有影響力。這也適用于工業網絡協議，因為他們大部分都有各自的支持企業。比如，在中國應用最廣的現場總線協議是PROFIBUS 和CC-Link，分別由西門子和三菱這兩家在中國市場份額較大的公司開發和推廣。

On the other hand, some open protocols also have a large number of nodes connected, and the most representative ones are CANOpen, Modbus and HART. However, all three protocols don’t deliver strong functionality, and they are more likely to be used in low-end applications for easy connections.

另一方面，一些開放協議也有大量的關聯節點，最有代表性的是CANOpen， Modbus和HART。不過，這三個協議在功能上均不算太強，往往被用于易于連接的低端應用。

With the upgrading of old facilities and the construction of new plants in China, customers also are being compelled to upgrade their systems using Ethernet. However, this move will not only be implemented by the customers, but also by the industrial automation vendors as well.

隨著中國市場舊工廠的升級改造和新廠的投建，用戶也將被迫使用以太網來升級他們的系統。而且，不僅僅是用戶采取這一措施，工業自動化供應商也將如此。

Most protocols have Ethernet variants. Because of this, many Fieldbus users will turn to the Ethernet of the application, for example, PROFIBUS to PROFINET, CC-Link to CC-Link IE. And the new automation products will also support those new Ethernet connections.

大多數協議有其以太網變體。正因為如此，許多現場總線用戶將應用轉向以太網，例如，PROFIBUS到PROFINET，CC-Link到CC-Link IE。而新的自動化產品也將支持這些新的以太網連接。

（文章來源：IMS Research）