Understanding the impact of your applications on the wireless network
With the environmental challenges understood, a deep dive into the current and future application requirements, with specific focus on how the chosen applications impact operations is required. Afterall, the purpose of the network is to enable the safety, productivity and cost reductions promised by the applications deployed. Many of these applications are real-time applications, impacting the network in a significantly different manner than most of the application use-cases that drive broadband technologies.
It’s all about orchestrating the communication of your applications
As an example, a mining application may be designed to provide real-time access to fleet data. On the bench, and even during field trials, the application is proven extremely beneficial, with strong ROI. However, after full mine-wide deployment, or even after the other critical mining applications are introduced on the same network, problems arise.
The new application is a real time application, providing nearly constant communication to hundreds of data points per fleet equipment. This real-time access prevents other applications the network access they require.
Understanding these technologies and the operations requirements for data access certainly can allow communication of the data from the new application, as well as from the pre-existing systems. Simple solutions just need to be put in place to ensure access to both data types, and at the schedule that makes sense for the operation. Both reliability, and scalability are provided through best of breed integration.
Designing a network that supports the operational requirements of your applications
The network isn’t the focus of your digitization efforts. It’s the applications you run over that network that increase productivity and safety. But without the right network enabling those applications, those increases don’t happen.
Understanding the bandwidth and latency requirements of the applications is certainly critical, but understanding the applications from an operational standpoint is where true success in network design and supporting occurs. With a solid knowledge of when, where, why, and how you use your applications data, a network that enables your success is possible.