Computer communications for factory automation

Factory communications in the 1990s have all the complexity of full-fledged distributed systems. While emerging standards such as Fieldbus solve the interconnection problem, in general they do not address the more general problem of reliable, transparent communication among cooperating, distributed applications. These new applications are known to require network layer and transparent layer services to achieve reliable end-to-end communication across an arbitrary network topology. The Xpress Transfer Protocol is designed to solve this problem by providing increased functionality and performance in the general area of real-time systems control.