December 9, 2010 - WingTip announced PlantMESH 802.11b/g/n Ethernet wireless mesh network system, which significantly changes the model for plant and outdoor networking – for the first time combining zero configuration with high speeds and a redundant, self-healing, highly secure and very scalable wireless network for both critical and non-critical networks. A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a lattice topology. These networks typically incorporate mesh clients, mesh routers and gateways. Mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones, sensors and other wireless devices, while the mesh routers forward traffic to and from the gateways connected to a larger wide area network.
The purpose of WMN is to provide a high-bandwidth network over a specific coverage area. The PlantMESH architecture is an infrastructure wireless mesh, which is a router network minus the cabling between nodes. It has intelligent peer radio nodes that don't need to be cabled to a wired port as traditional access points do. This means a mesh network is more reliable and offers redundancy so that when one node can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate nodes. The PlantMESH solution comprises five product modules:
- MeshCORE is the starting point for the system; it serves as the supervisory controller and is also an access point, providing wireless client connectivity up to 1,500 feet via standard 802.11 b, g and n, with a dedicated 5.8 gigahertz (GHz) backhaul for transporting traffic between other PlantMESH modules;
- MeshSTATION modules provide the ability to extend the network up to 1,500 feet, include the dedicated 5.8Ghz backhaul, and two can be connected via an Ethernet cable to continue operation through barriers;
- MeshLINK modules extend the network to remote facilities, providing a point-to-point high bandwidth link of up to four miles between MeshLINK units;
- MeshNODE modules provide the ability to connect any standard wired Ethernet device to a PlantMESH network, and can be utilized to remove dead spots and to provide virtual local area network (VLAN) termination;
- MeshMOBILE enables the connection of any wired Ethernet device mounted on mobile devices or vehicles, such as forklifts, automated guided vehicles or other material handling equipment.
Out of the box, PlantMESH provides three virtual access points, providing plants with three separate networks, all on the same wireless mesh. Typical usage is one for the process control network, one for the business network and one for a vendor network, allowing outside vendors to gain access to the internet without impacting the plant or providing secure internal information to third parties.PlantMESH is also very secure, using 256 or 128 bit WPA2 Symmetric Key AES encryption for all network traffic and a separate Secure Shell (SSH) tunnels between nodes for optimization and control. If any PlantMESH node should stop communicating, the MeshCORE will re-optimize the entire network and alert administrators to the issue.
The Layer 3 routing algorithm identifies when a node stops working and reroutes traffic to the next best path automatically to provide fail-safe operation.Unlike other mesh networks, the PlantMESH system is designed so that it can handle a very high number of nodes per subnet, effectively limited only by the number of hops, not by the total number of nodes. The base cost for PlantMESH modules are $2,495 for the MeshCORE supervisory controller; $1,650 for each MeshSTATION module; $1,595 per MeshLINK unit; $349 to $429 for MeshNODE modules; and $749 for each MeshMOBILE module. Quantity discounts are available for large volume orders.