the M2M issue ANYWHERE YOUR NETWORK NEEDS TO GO

44 Pages·2014·7.25 MB·English

the M M issue
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April 2014
ANYWHERE YOUR NETWORK NEEDS TO GO
What’s Inside
4 CONNECTING THE PAST THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE ON THE INTERNET OF THINGS
6 WHERE ARE THINGS CONNECTED NOW
8 I ndustrial Automation
10 M onitoring and Managing Mobile Assets
12 F leet Management
14 R emote Monitoring and Control
16 E nergy & Natural Resources
18 Transportation
20 Transaction Management
22 Security
24 Enterprise IT
26 WHERE WILL THINGS CONNECT IN THE FUTURE
28 BUILD IT TODAY WITH TOMORROW IN MIND
30 E volve, Adapt, Adopt
32 R e-imagine Your Wired Connections
34 E xtend Your Network Edge
36 E xtending the Life of Useful Equipment
38 RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER
40 WHEREVER YOUR NETWORK NEEDS TO GO
40 DISTRIBUTION PARTNERS
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Connecting the Future,
the Past and the Present
on the Internet of Things
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News stories about innovation in data communications tend to emphasize
consumer products. They focus on the human experience and the ways in which IsM
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we interact with new technologies when they become available in the marketplace. uM
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But consumer tech is only one part of the story. In the industrial world, the focus
isn’t on human beings. It’s on increasingly intelligent machines that speak directly
to other machines, and on increasing the efficiency and productivity of industrial
processes by making machines more capable and more autonomous. Rather than
creating new human interactions with machines, industrial networking engineers
seek to make human intervention less important, reducing or eliminating it
wherever possible.
Unlike the consumer world, where new technologies quickly drive their
predecessors out of the picture, industry can’t casually discard existing networking
infrastructure. Much of it is far too valuable and far too complex to be cast
aside. As new industrial data networking technologies continue to appear,
they’ll be expected to co-exist with earlier technologies for as long as those
older technologies remain useful. The new technologies will add new layers of
sophistication to our existing M2M data networks and provide them with dramatic
new capabilities. But no single technology is yet the best for every purpose. So
our industrial networks will have to aggregate, convert and transmit multiple data
networking protocols, from Modbus to TCP/IP. They will have to move data across
fiber, copper, cellular and wireless connections. They will have to take advantage
of new opportunities when they become available, but they’ll need to let older
equipment remain connected as well. Instead of eliminating the data networking
technologies of the past and the present, the industrial networks of the future will
absorb and incorporate them.
Where Does Your
Network
Need to Go?
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WHERE ARE THINGS
CONNECTED NOW?
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INDUSTRIAL
AUTOMATION
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M2M on the Floor
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Every M2M network is a work in progress. When a bakery in Massachusetts
discovered that communications glitches in their RS-485 connections were
altering the conveyor belt speed in the ovens, they didn’t panic and replace the
entire system. They simply deployed optically isolated RS-422/485 repeaters
and solved the problem. When the operators of a coal delivery SCADA system
in Indiana observed that motion and vibration were disconnecting their data
cables, they replaced the copper cables with 900 MHz serial radio modems.
A manufacturer of laboratory instruments in Illinois builds reliable, time-
tested serial equipment. When USB became available, they stuck with their
successful designs and upgraded them with USB-to-serial converters.
Every data networking technology has its own strengths and weaknesses. If
an existing system is quite capable of doing the job, and there are proven,
easy answers that will resolve problems as they arise, it only makes economic
sense to keep using them. You don’t need to uproot your existing installations
simply because there are newer ways to achieve the same results. You can
budget for new technology when you need to add new capabilities and pursue
new opportunities. In the meantime, why not let useful equipment keep
working?
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THE INTERNET OF MOBILE THINGS
MANAGING YOUR MOBILE ASSETS
Mobile assets present network engineers with unique challenges. As forklifts move around a facility,
they may move in and out of network range. Delivery and service vans may be dozens of miles from
headquarters, and the big rigs roam across the entire country. Wired connections aren’t an option, so
operators use Wi-Fi, satellites and the cellular networks.
FACILITIES
One doesn’t often think of forklifts as vehicles, but large plants often contain enough of them that
equipping the fleet with mobile wireless connections confers great advantages. Central control
can ensure that only authorized operators are using the equipment. Collisions and accidents can
be reduced. Processes like checklist inspection can be automated. And, as with any telematics
operation, vehicle maintenance event codes can be tracked and monitored at all times.
All of this is easy to do with dual-band, wireless device servers that provide all of the necessary RF
technology, networking stacks, and advanced security features in a single box solution. Equipping
the forklifts with wireless device servers turns them into Wi-Fi enabled mobile network nodes. The
dual band Wi-Fi feature lets operators choose the Wi-Fi band that is the most reliable under local
conditions.
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