The IEC 62439 series is applicable to high-availability automation networks based on the ISO/IEC 8802‑3 (IEEE 802.3) (Ethernet) technology.

This part of the IEC 62439 series specifies a recovery protocol based on a ring topology, designed to react deterministically on a single failure of an inter-switch link or switch in the network, under the control of a dedicated media redundancy manager node.