Rockwell Automation and Cisco have announced the release of a white paper and design and implementation guide titled: ‘Deploying 802.11 Wireless LAN Technology within a Converged Plantwide Ethernet Architecture’. The detailed design guide will help control system engineers, IT network engineers and system integrators to implement standard, IP-based wireless networks in a more robust, secure and scalable way.
The guide provides in-depth information on 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) solutions within a converged plant-wide Ethernet (CPwE) architecture, including design considerations for fixed position, nomadic and mobile equipment use cases. It includes explanations on how to configure, maintain and troubleshoot WLAN for each use case, and detailed documentation on how the architectures were tested and validated by Cisco and Rockwell Automation. With this new resource, network designers can create a small network within a plant using a single autonomous access point, and scale up to create a larger, unified WLAN architecture.
“Wi-Fi networks are incredibly useful in factory and plant applications – so useful that manufacturers must plan their Wi-Fi networks as an infrastructure serving all types of applications,” says Harry Forbes, senior analyst, ARC. “This new and timely resource from Rockwell Automation and Cisco incorporates lessons that many manufacturers learned through experience.”
The recommendations provided in these documents were demonstrated in the Industrial IP Advantage booth at the 2014 Automation Fair held in Annaheim. The entire booth was a small-scale representation of the CPwE architecture, featuring a plant operations control room equipped with a WLAN controller and Cisco Lightweight Access Point. The network extended to process and packaging areas in the booth via the Allen Bradley Stratix 5100 wireless access point/work Group Bridge, jointly developed by Rockwell Automation and Cisco.
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