Allied Telesis Media Redundancy Protocol

Media redundancy is primarily used to avoid single points of failure in industrial communication networks. If a failure occurs on a redundant structure, the network falls back to a secondary state in which communication is still viable, and repair can be made to restore the system to the previous fault-free state.

Ethernet technology does not allow physical loops, as they cause packets to circulate endlessly and overload the network. This means providing media redundancy within an Ethernet network requires the use of a protocol that is able to monitor and resolve the physical loops introduced by redundant pathways. This protocol must ensure that, even with multiple physical pathways to any device, only one is activated at any one time and the remaining are in standby mode.

Media Redundancy Protocol (MRP) is a protocol for providing redundancy in Ethernet networks via a ring. MRP is specified for ring networks with up to 50 devices. It guarantees fully predictable switchover behavior. Allied Telesis switches support worst-case switch-over times of 200 or 500ms.

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