Ethernet/IP, Profinet, Modbus, Modbus TCP, DeviceNet, ControlNet, Profibus, OPC UA, and MQTT — plus the network design, switching, fiber, redundancy, and cybersecurity fundamentals every protocol above runs on top of.
The PLCs from Modules 3 through 5 and the instrumentation from Module 6 only become a coordinated system once they're on a network, and a modern plant floor is rarely running just one protocol. This module builds the architecture picture first — Purdue Model levels, zone segmentation, the industrial DMZ — then works through the fieldbus and Ethernet-based protocol families an engineer actually has to choose between, the physical layer decisions (switches, fiber, topology) that make any of them reliable, and the redundancy and cybersecurity practices that keep a network running when a single cable or switch fails.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why a Modbus TCP register map and an Ethernet/IP CIP object model solve the same basic problem in fundamentally different ways, and why that difference matters when a SCADA server in Module 8 has to poll both on the same plant network.