Rethinking connectivity: Considerations for designing industrial IoT networks
Fig. 1: Connectivity between OT and IT systems is critical for an IIoT network.
Many businesses around the world are developing strategies on how to embrace new trends such as globalisation and digitisation. However, working out how to effectively embrace emerging trends is not easy. Within the automation industry, most business owners are trying to understand the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and adjust their production and services to ensure that they can reap the benefits of the IIoT now and into the future.
The IIoT: A creator of global trends
IIoT has the potential to increase business opportunities by connecting related products and systems together. This convergence of devices and systems allows for significantly more data to be gathered, which in turn empowers business owners to make more informed decisions. Most business owners are aware of the benefits of the IIoT and have started to incorporate IIoT strategies into their business plan. All predictions state that by 2020, there will be tens of billions of devices connected. If these devices have the capability to communicate effectively, the potential to enhance efficiency, and therefore profits, is a very real and attractive prospect. The IIoT concept is causing business leaders to give thought and consideration to how to produce a comprehensive solution to make these visions a reality.
The importance of connectivity for the IIoT
For business owners in the industrial automation world, the first question they often ask is: how can I apply the IIoT concept to my business model? Typically, the first challenge that they encounter relates to connectivity, due to the fundamental differences between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). This hurdle is one of the most difficult to overcome, but the benefits make the effort worthwhile.
Seamless migration to an IIoT network
IIoT networks need to ensure that all devices can communicate with each other. The biggest issue that is often encountered is how to connect legacy devices to IIoT networks. There are currently two common approaches available based on typical operating scenarios.
Making devices smarter via an IIoT gateway
IIoT gateways are frequently used in order to create a data transmission bridge between devices in the OT and IT worlds. As almost all IIoT networks do not currently utilise a set of universal protocols, IIoT gateways are going to play an important role on IIoT networks for the foreseeable future. On these networks, direct transmission of vast amounts of data across networks can lead to network latency and IT personnel are required to use a lot of effort to identify useful data, which results in delayed data analytics. To deal with this, there are some features that gateways should support to make the process more effective.
Networks with sufficient bandwidth and high availability avoid interruptions, downtime, and failure
As IIoT networks host more devices compared to traditional networks, it is therefore even more important to enhance the reliability of the IIoT network. Although multiple networks converging to form an IIoT network brings numerous benefits, it is particularly troublesome for business owners if the network experiences any interruptions, downtime, or failure, as this would mean the entire system would go down, whereas previously, only a small part of the system failed. One method to enhance the reliability of IIoT networks is to ensure network availability and high bandwidth.
High availability means the network is designed with redundancy to prevent having a single point of failure to ensure that the network stays up and running. This type of redundant network design also minimises the amount of downtime required when fixing issues on the network.
Ensuring network security now and into the future
Many system operators have stated that the best way to secure a network against cyberattacks is to use the defence-in-depth security architecture, which is designed to protect individual zones and cells. Any communication that needs to take place across these zones or cells must be done through a firewall or virtual private network (VPN). Deploying this type of architecture reduces the chance that the whole network will fail due to an attack because each layer is able to address a different security threat. It also reduces the risk to the entire network; if a problem occurs in one part of the network, there is a higher chance that the problem can be contained within that layer and will not spread to the other layers.
Conclusion
It is clear that there are multiple benefits for business owners that deploy solutions and products that follow the IIoT trend. However, there are several obstacles that need to be overcome. Of these obstacles, connectivity between OT and IT systems is seen as the most important. Therefore, business owners must pay significant attention to whether their current connectivity solution is ready to be used with IIoT applications.
Contact RJ Connect, Tel 011 781-0777, info@rjconnect.co.za
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