The IEC 61499 is an open standard for the next generation of distributed control and automation. Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems (DDS) is a specification of a publish/subscribe middleware for distributed systems, created by the Object Management Group (OMG) to standardize a data-centric publish-subscribe programming model for distributed systems. This paper evaluates the DDS communication performance based on a model built within the IEC 61499 standard and compares it with the traditional socket based solution for communication. According to the test results, the DDS communication has the potential to reduce the complexity and is suggested as a suitable solution for some classes of industrial control systems.