EtherCAT - Industrial Realtime Ethernet Technology

EtherCAT - Ethernet for Control Automation Technology - is an open high performance Ethernet-based fieldbus system (based on IEC-Standard IEC61158). The development goal of EtherCAT was to apply Ethernet to automation applications which require short data update times (also called cycle times) with low communication jitter (for synchronization purposes) and low hardware costs. (Source: WIKIPEDIA)