Patent ID: 7991936

Claim:
A communications subscriber interface between a network and a field bus, comprising: the communications subscriber connected to the network, and the field bus connected to the communications subscriber, said communications subscriber having terminal-specific software objects representing, from the point of view of the network, terminals connected to the field bus as an instance of an object type, which terminals cannot be reached directly via the network, and which terminal-specific software objects provide a collection of input and/or output data and/or methods which is geared to the respective functionalities of the terminals and can be used to access these functionalities, wherein the software objects can be addressed via the network using a transfer protocol defined for the network, in exactly the same way as the communications subscriber itself or other communications subscribers, and wherein the field bus synchronizes an address space which is shared by the communications subscriber and the terminals and can be mapped at least in a shared memory of the communications subscriber, and wherein a particular software object representing a particular terminal includes a table that specifies data access paths corresponding to different functions associated with the particular terminal, including: at least one first table entry for a first function associated with the particular terminal, the at least one first table entry specifying an access path to the particular terminal via the field bus, such that upon receiving a request for the first function at the communications subscriber via the network, the particular software object executes the first function by communicating with the particular terminal via the field bus; and at least one second table entry for a second function associated with data communicated from the particular terminal to the shared memory and maintained in the shared memory, the at least one second table entry specifying an access path to the shared memory and within the communications subscriber, such that upon receiving a request for the second function at the communications subscriber via the network, the particular software object executes the second function by communicating with the shared memory and without communicating with the particular terminal, such that the field bus is relieved of load.