ODVA 2026 Industry Conference

The transition of industrial automation toward Industry 4.0, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and flexible manufacturing requires robust wireless communication, such as Wi-Fi 6 and 5G. Traditional industrial Ethernet protocols were designed for wired, deterministic environments, and adapting them to wireless media introduces significant architectural challenges. This paper argues that EtherNet/IP™ demonstrates clear superiority for wireless deployments over PROFINET, EtherCAT, and Modbus/TCP. Built on the standard TCP/IP suite, EtherNet/IP integrates natively with wireless networks, avoiding the complex tunneling required by non-IP-based protocols. Through a series of Monte Carlo simulations (N=10,000 trials), this paper quantitatively demonstrates EtherNet/IP's advantages in latency (μ=8 ms), infinite node scalability, topology resilience (μ=109 ms recovery), and functional safety jitter tolerance. Furthermore, economic modeling reveals that wireless EtherNet/IP deployments can reduce 5-year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by up to 93% compared to wired alternatives, primarily by eliminating cable-fault downtime. These combined technical and economic strengths establish EtherNet/IP as the premier choice for robust, large-scale wireless industrial systems.

Author
Rob Lodesky, HMS Industrial Networks