ARCNET has many characteristics that make it ideal for industrial and embedded networking environments. This is due to the deterministic nature of ARCNET, its high reliability and fault tolerance, and its adaptability to a wide variety of cabling media and configurations. SMSC is the market leader in ARCNET devices and has a full spectrum of solutions to meet any customer's price and performance needs.

CircLink, an ARCNET derivative, further improves on the protocol by eliminating the need for external processor and is optimized as a wire-replacement technology inside industrial and commercial machines.