This pyramid reflects the top-to-bottom hierarchy of a typical modern factory. The top three layers of the pyramid communicate with each other using traditional Ethernet. The bottom blue layer is where the field devices reside, performing the physical work of the factory. Examples of field devices include actuators, motors, pumps, conveyor belts, sensors, pressure gauges, robots, or servo drives. Unfortunately, these field devices use many different two-wire communication protocols such as HART, fieldbus, CAN, RS485, RS232, and FlexRay, as well as proprietary protocols, so gateways are required to translate the bottom layer field device protocols to Ethernet on the top three layers. A more holistic factory model is illustrated on the right side of the slide, where the factory uses only Ethernet top-to-bottom for communication to all of the field devices. This eliminates gateways and is a more conducive environment for augmenting machine learning and artificial intelligence to fully manipulate the field devices and capture real-time data from the factory floor directly to the cloud. To this end, the Ethernet Alliance ratified the IEEE802.3cg specification in Q4 of 2019.