This free animated viewer shows how an industrial control network is built — from PLCs and managed switches on the plant floor up through SCADA and into the enterprise. Watch industrial Ethernet protocols like EtherNet/IP and PROFINET move across ring and star topologies, and see how redundancy (DLR/MRP) keeps the network running when a link fails. It's a visual learning tool for automation and controls engineers, OT/ICS network designers, system integrators, and students learning industrial networking.
The viewer covers the devices and links of a typical plant-floor control network:
• PLCs and I/O — the controllers and remote I/O exchanging real-time data with field devices. • Managed industrial switches — providing VLANs, QoS, and ring redundancy on a hardened platform. • SCADA / HMI — the supervisory layer monitoring and commanding the process. • Industrial Ethernet traffic — EtherNet/IP (CIP) and PROFINET frames moving between nodes. • Topologies — star and ring layouts, with the redundant ring path highlighted. • Redundancy protocols — DLR and MRP closing the ring to survive a single link or device failure. • Purdue model zones — the hierarchical boundaries separating control, supervisory, and enterprise levels.
Industrial networks are usually structured by the Purdue model, which layers the plant from field devices (Level 0/1) through supervisory control (Level 2) and site operations (Level 3) up to the enterprise (Levels 4/5), with a DMZ separating OT from IT. Within the control layers, real-time protocols such as EtherNet/IP and PROFINET carry deterministic traffic between PLCs, I/O, and HMIs. Because downtime is costly, the physical layer is often built as a redundant ring using DLR (in EtherNet/IP networks) or MRP (common with PROFINET), so a single break heals in milliseconds. Managed switches enforce segmentation, prioritization, and the ring protocol throughout.
1. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, and pan to move around the topology. 2. Click a PLC, switch, SCADA node, or link to highlight it and read what it does. 3. Toggle or follow the ring path to watch how DLR/MRP redundancy reroutes traffic when a link fails, and note how the Purdue zone boundaries separate the levels.
EtherNet/IP is an industrial Ethernet protocol that runs the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) over standard Ethernet and TCP/IP. It is widely used with Allen-Bradley/Rockwell systems to exchange real-time I/O and configuration data between PLCs, drives, and field devices, and it supports DLR ring redundancy for high availability.
In a star topology, every device connects back to a central switch — simple to wire, but a failure of that switch or a single uplink can isolate devices. In a ring, switches are connected in a loop so traffic has two possible paths; if one link breaks, a redundancy protocol reroutes around it, which is why rings are common on critical plant-floor networks.
A control network outage can halt production, scrap a batch, or create a safety hazard, so industrial networks are engineered to tolerate a single failure without interruption. Ring-based redundancy protocols like DLR (EtherNet/IP) and MRP (PROFINET) detect a broken link and restore communication within milliseconds, far faster than spanning tree, keeping the process running.
An unmanaged switch simply forwards traffic with no configuration. A managed switch adds features essential to industrial networks — VLAN segmentation, QoS prioritization for real-time traffic, ring redundancy (DLR/MRP), diagnostics, and security — and is typically hardened for wide temperature ranges, vibration, and DIN-rail mounting.
The Purdue model (ISA-95 reference architecture) is a layered framework for industrial network design. It separates the plant into levels — from field instrumentation (Level 0) and control (Level 1), through supervisory SCADA (Level 2) and site operations (Level 3), to the enterprise (Levels 4/5) — usually with a DMZ between OT and IT to control the flow of traffic and improve security.