Rugged Ethernet Switch Family
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o-40 to +85°C qualified
oFully EN 50155 (railway) compliant
o8 Fast Ethernet ports via RJ45, M12 or D-Sub
oManaged and unmanaged models
oPower over Ethernet (managed models)
oWide-range power supply
Nuremberg, Germany - September 26, 2008. On the occasion of the InnoTrans railway show in Berlin MEN Mikro Elektronik introduces a new product family of rugged Ethernet switches. Designed for harsh environments that meet the EN 50155 railway standard - e.g. an operation temperature from -40 to +85°C - this line of products includes both managed and unmanaged 8-port Fast Ethernet switches. The product range comprises stand-alone or 19" rack mountable versions (SF1 through SF4) with three available types of front connectors (RJ45, M12, D-Sub) for a broad palette of applications.
An easily customizable, open low-power platform
All switches support full-duplex and half-duplex operation, high-speed non-blocking, store-and-forward switching and autonegotiation as well as Layer-2 switching. They are fault tolerant and restore themselves on their own: if a link is temporarily unavailable, it will work again after the disturbance without any restart or reset. Their built-in test mechanisms make these rugged Ethernet switches even more reliable components in the communication system. The switches consume less than 7 W and are installed in a fanless housing.
The rugged Ethernet switches were specifically designed for mobile communication systems. They are thus for example fully compliant with the EN 50155 railway standard and feature a wide-range power supply (14 to 154 V). All components are specified for a -40 to +85°C operation temperature. There are no socketed components, hardening the product against shock and vibration. The PCBs are ready for coating and every switch has a guaranteed minimum standard availability of 5 years.
Managed or unmanaged models for diverse applications
The managed stand-alone models SF2 and SF3 include their own FPGA-based low-power CPU that integrates the management firmware (the source code is available for development of individual management functions). In addition, they also support Power over Ethernet (PoE) on ports 0 and 1 and can act as a Power Source Equipment (PSE) or Powered Device (PD). A service interface is accessible at the front panel, providing an easy way to configure the switch using an SMB interface on a standard D-Sub connector.
All of the ports are individually configurable. Using a hardware key, a Telnet command line interface or SNMP (Version 3) also makes maintenance very easy, for example when the switch is used on board a vehicle or in automation applications.
For the unmanaged switch models SF1 and SF4 MEN also provides fixed managed versions with a configuration EEPROM tailored to the application's requirements. This may include features such as 802.1p priority and port-based priority, port-based VLAN or IEEE 802.1q VLAN IDs.
MEN Mikro Elektronik - Profile and Mission
Since its foundation in 1982 our company designs and manufactures failure-safe computer boards and systems for extreme environmental conditions in industrial and safety-critical embedded applications. Our mission is to provide innovative solutions while maximizing reliability and flexibility.
With nearly 200 employees and subsidiaries in France and the USA we have an annual revenue of 28 million Euros with an export share of about 50%. Customized solutions make for more than half of our revenue. In addition the standard product range includes far more than 100 different computer boards with Intel® Pentium® and multi-core processors and PowerPC® with the corresponding BIOS, BSP and driver software, manifold I/O boards and completely configured systems based on:
oESMexpress® and ESM(TM) Embedded System Modules
o3U and 6U CompactPCI®, CompactPCI® Express and VMEbus
oPMC, XMC and M-Modules(TM) as system-independent mezzanine I/O standards
The consistent use of FPGA technology gives us high flexibility when configuring customized and standard products.
Our products are used worldwide as control, measuring, test or simulation computers in all kinds of embedded applications. These comprise extremely safety-critical markets such as railways, including buses and commercial vehicles, aerospace technology or the medical industry, but also mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, telecommunications and the automotive industry. Computer systems in such applications are in operation up to 24 hours every day and often need to be available for 10 years and longer. Ideally no failures must occur to avoid costly downtimes of machines or danger to human life.
We are certified to ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001 in order to offer our customers the highest quality in products and services while considering environmental protection and occupational safety on the basis of a recognized quality management system. To meet the severe quality requirements in critical applications we are working on certification to AS 9100 (aerospace) and IRIS (railways).
Our aim is to constantly improve and to provide the highest technology and innovation level. Our business ethics is determined by the principles of the United Nations' Global Compact Initiative (human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption).
