Most Industrial Ethernet Switches have redundant power inputs. It came as a surprise to me when I began to discover how few end users actually utilize this. I'd like to take an impromptu poll of the forum. Do your switches and other devices have the capability to accept redundant power inputs? Do you use this functionality?

Could it be that power interruptions at the switch are uncommon due to plant wide generator backup or some other UPS scheme? It seems to me that users must have covered the possibility of loss of power some way.

"Oops, network is down, kiss $xxxx.xx of lost productivity goodby" just doesn't seem to be a good response when it could be avoided with very little cost or effort.

Melvin, you could be right, but if so I'm surprised that engineers and automation specialists haven't dug a bit deeper into product functionality and taken advantage of every way to keep a network up and running. Having said that, it wouldn't be the first time I've been surprised at what I've found in the field.