October 12, 2006
Plant Engineering magazine presented a webcast today on “Advancements in Wireless Ethernet.” You can find it archived here later. Each of the three presenters was from a PTO member company: Siemens, Phoenix Contact, and ProSoft. But the presentation was not geared towards any one protocol; it was about the infrastructure. For those new to wireless, this is a good starting point. After the presentations, some of the questions were pointed:
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When will SP100 be ready? Answer: don’t know.
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Can you route safety over wireless? Answer: Yes. Jeremy Bryant cited an application that uses PROFINET, PROFIsafe, and wireless.
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Is Wireless traffic a problem? Answer: It can be with some protocols that use multicasting (like Ethernet/IP).
I highly recommend this webcast as a good introduction to wireless Ethernet.