Distributed Control Systems, PLCs, and Networking

Whether it be with a customer, a hiring manager, or even your pet, communication is key, and the automation realm is no different. Since the dawn of the computer age, the goal of all IT systems is to relay information from one electrical device to another. The early 2000s saw this concept explode with the widespread adoption of the internet. With the cost of computing drastically decreasing and automation controllers becoming significantly more powerful, point-to-point communication within an automation system has become paramount.

With the way most manufacturing environments now operate, it is not uncommon for many different types of automated controllers to be networked together for coordination. Even isolated systems still use networking technologies to communicate with different parts of the machine such as motor drives, power supplies, and so on. If you want to be an automation engineer, or at least grow as an automation developer...