Iaona, the organisation set up in 1999 to promote the use of Ethernet TCP/IP as an automation standard, has disbanded, saying that it has achieved its goal.

An overwhelming majority of the non-profit organisation`s 85-plus corporate members voted in June to dissolve the group. "We have now completed our mission," says chairman Bernard Dumortier. "We have achieved a great deal."

During its seven years of existence, Iaona produced manuals and devised standards relating to the real-time capabilities, security and connections systems for industrial Ethernet.

The number of industrial Ethernet-based applications is now expanding by more than 30% a year, and the IEC has approved ten Ethernet-based protocols as PASs (publicly available standards).