Last year, EtherNet/IP was the world’s most popular form of industrial Ethernet, with a 30% share of the market, followed closely by Profinet with 28%. A survey by the market analyst IMS Research also shows that Modbus TCP/IP was used in 22% of applications, and Powerlink in 11%. All other systems together made up the remaining 9%.

B&R Automation, which developed the Powerlink system, says that this means that Profinet and Powerlink are the most widely used industrial Ethernet protocols for transferring machine and sensor data in real-time, because neither EtherNet/IP nor Modbus TCP/IP are suitable for high-speed drive control. Moreover, it points out that Profinet’s 28% market share includes all versions of Profinet, a large portion of which are non real-time versions.