The New Basis of Industrial Connectivity and Networking Solutions
With the Industrial Internet of Things fast becoming the norm in industries, converging IT and OT technologies securely—
a cornerstone of the IIoT—is still the Achilles heel for many companies. Thus, choosing the right
industrial network solutions for your operation, and this cannot be repeated
often enough, is essential. At the same time, this is easier said than done. Too often, this arduous task befalls an IT
engineer with little experience of OT protocols and automation systems, or, on the flip side, an OT engineer with no
knowledge of enterprise IT networking. In this article, we take a closer look at how new technologies are shaping the role of
industrial connectivity and networking solutions in your IIoT applications.
Industrial Connectivity Needs—Now and in the Future
Connecting your previously unconnected industrial devices and assets is the first step to enabling IIoT applications.
Accomplishing this task requires a thorough assessment of the types of OT assets you need to connect as well as the specific
connectivity requirements, such as connecting OT assets to a local network or a cloud server. Since OT assets in industrial
applications mainly use serial or I/O communication interfaces, choosing the right serial and I/O connectivity solutions is
essential to enable industrial connectivity. Moreover, you need to keep in mind additional considerations, such as
cybersecurity and large-scale device management, when connecting OT assets to remote or cloud servers.
Besides enabling connectivity for previously unconnected OT assets, connecting all of these field devices also requires
building a network that can support information flows among multiple interconnected devices, systems, and even remote sites.
Suitable Solutions
With more than thirty years of experience in helping customers overcome industrial connectivity and networking
challenges, we have identified several key criteria for selecting the most suitable solutions for industrial automation
applications. Download our E-book where you can find considerations for each specific connectivity and networking solution
you are looking for.
Before we come to the comparison between inline couplers and keystone jacks, let’s have a brief overview of these two
jacks. A small device for connecting two
ethernet cables to make a
longer cable, usually called an
inline coupler or RJ45 coupler. Inline
couplers do not provide any amplification or signal boost, and can cause attenuation and signal degradation unless they are
of high quality. There are cat5e and cat6 RJ45 inline couplers available on the market.
People who have electrical cable installation experience know clearly what is a
keystone jack. A keystone jack is a female connector for mounting a variety of low-voltage electrical jacks or
optical connectors into a keystone wall plate, faceplate, surface-mount box or
patch panel. A keystone plug is a matching male connector, usually attached to the end of a cable or cord. Traditional
keystone jack needs a punch-down tool to help finish cable installation, but this toolless
STP keystone jack is different. With the snap-fit cap design, conductors can
be terminated simultaneously when the cap is pressed into place, allowing for a simple installation without the need for a
punch-down tool.
The eight-position
modular plug uses insulation displacement contacts
that terminate the conductors and provide the contact interface surface for the mating jack contacts. These plugs are crimp-
terminated onto cordage or cable. With these new technologies, we are witnessing the conversion of many commercial building
devices and systems from analog, to digital, and now IP-addressable. The resulting migration of these devices and systems to
four-twisted-pair cabling represents an additional class of equipment looking to be served by versions of communication
cabling.
A
network wall plate is a cabling fixture attached to a wall in
a work area for connecting computers to the network. Also called a faceplate. Wall Plates can have RJ-45 jacks for 10BaseT
networks (which resemble household RJ-11 telephone wall jacks), BNC jacks for 10Base2 networks, or SC jacks for networks that
use fiber-optic cabling. The back end of the connector joins a horizontal cable that runs inside the wall or through a false
ceiling or floor to a patch panel in the wiring closet for that floor. Computers are then connected to the wall plate by a
short unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) cable called a drop cable. Wallplates typically come in mono-port, dual-port, and quad-
port configurations.