ProfiTap Industrial is an interface to utilize monitoring of a PROFINET network. It is an essential tool for PROFINET engineering activities, especially to verify the connections and performance of IRT and other real-time applications. The monitor port of switches is unreliable for monitoring; it can be occupied or is not forwarding all traffic. The load on the Ethernet port of the laptop is also too high with IRT applications because 2 channels are merged in one. The ProfiTap has a USB link with the laptop that streams the captured messages to the accompanying driver, which emulates an additional Ethernet port on the laptop and hands the messages over to any application, such as Wireshark. The ProfiTap also prevents the laptop to send out messages on its own initiative, which could jeopardize the real-time behavior and security of the network.
