EtherCAT

Connecting servo drives, remote IO, and sensors to Ethernet sounds like a natural upgrade: the cabling is mature, the bandwidth is high, and the tools are familiar. But control systems are usually not blocked by whether data can arrive at all. They are blocked by whether data can arrive inside a stable cycle. A position value that arrives a few hundred microseconds late is not the same kind of problem as a web page that opens a few hundred microseconds late.