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Will Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Improve the IIoT?

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Is current Internet technology sufficient for the needs of Industry 4.0 or the IIoT?  Or could it be better?  How can we enhance Ethernet to improve real-time data communications? These are the kinds of issues that some key players in Industrial IoT plan to address by developing the world’s first time-sensitive networking (TSN) infrastructure.

TSN has been defined as “a set of IEEE 802 standards designed to enhance Ethernet networking to support latency-sensitive applications that require deterministic network performance,” according to Mike Baciodore in a recent article in Control Design titled “How time-sensitive networking enables the IIoT”

Put simply, the goal of TSN is to provide the IoT with the same kind of real-time performance that is now limited to individual machines like cars and airplanes, or to distributed control systems in industrial applications.  The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), along with Intel, National Instruments, Bosch Rexroth, Cisco, Schneider Electric and others have joined forces to achieve this goal, to enable a truly real-time IoT.

TSN is Good News for Skkynet

This collaboration to develop TSN comes as good news to us here at Skkynet.  Since we currently provide secure, bidirectional, supervisory control capabilities over TCP, we understand how much more effective our software and services will be when supported by TSN.

With TSN, our latencies of a few ms over Internet speeds would be reduced to simply a few ms.  Data dynamics would be better preserved, and system behavior more deterministic.  This effort to develop TSN validates our thinking that the IIoT works best with low-latency, high-speed networking.  Unlike those who operate on the assumption that web communication technology (REST) is the way forward, the TSN approach means that networked data communications can approximate or equal in-plant speeds and latencies.

Several participants and commentators on the TSN project point out that typical cloud architectures are not ideal counterparts for TSN.  Something fundamentally different is required.  Putting their individual ideas and suggestions together, what they envision for an architecture is remarkably close to what Skkynet currently provides.  It should be secure by design, fully integrate edge computing, and keep the system running without interruption during any network outages.  Above all, it must provide secure, selective access to any process data, in real time.

“One of the cool concepts out there is that people will want to have a cyberphysical representation of the equipment in the cloud,” said Paul Didier, solutions architect manager at Cisco. “That doesn’t mean the physical plant will be controlled in the cloud. Optimization and maintenance can be done in the cloud and will filter its way back to the machine.”

Our recent case study showcasing DataHub and SkkyHub technology illustrates this “cyberphysical representation.”  During the deployment and test of a mineral processing system, developers thousands of miles away monitored the machine logic and tweaked the system in real time. “It was as if we were sitting beside them in the control room,” said one of the team, “and through live monitoring, we were able to continue developing the application, thanks to the real-time connectivity.”

It’s a small step from this to machine control, and time-sensitive networking will be a welcome technology in that direction.  To the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and everyone else involved in this project, we say keep up the great work!  We’re ready to put TSN to good use when it becomes available.

Case Study: PowerData, Caribbean

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Caribbean resort facilities and power stations use DataHub to monitor system output and performance

Even on the lush tropical beaches of St. Maarten, Suriname, St. Kitts, and Antigua, where the sunshine sparkles on the deep turquoise waters of the Caribbean, access to real-time data is vital. While tourists lounge on white sand beaches, the managers and engineers at resorts, shopping centers, and power plants work round the clock behind the scenes to ensure a smooth experience. Operators and managers in the public institutions and private facilities at these remote destinations need to know what their processes are doing at any given time, from any location. They must be able to react quickly to changing conditions and make key decisions.

To meet this need, PowerData Limited of St. Maarten provides real-time and historical online data reporting services. They supply managers and engineers in power plants, resorts, and commercial facilities in the Caribbean islands with the data they need to monitor their power generation equipment, instrumentation, and other machinery. Recently, PowerData started using the DataHub® to give their customers a real-time data display using a standard web browser.

“Now our clients can open a web browser from wherever they are, and see exactly what is going on,” said Mr. Cameron Burn, CEO of PowerData. “The DataHub’s Java applets lets us feed large quantities of data to a page at high speeds, with no refresh necessary.”

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Cameron is using the DataHub’s Table applet to display multiple DataHub points. His web server provides the page, and loads the DataHub Table applet. The applet then creates a direct TCP link to the DataHub, which is connected to the PowerData monitoring equipment’s OPC server. The DataHub streams the data from the PowerData equipment to the web page in real time. The processing load on the web browser is very little-there’s no need for screen refresh-and the data is always up-to-the-second accurate.

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“Remote monitoring of our engine installations has been one of the most valuable aspects of this new system,” said Mr. Jeff Close, MAN Support Services Engineer at Needsmust Electricity Power Station in St. Kitts. “This is so much easier, and much more reliable, than the manual monitoring and logging methods we were using in the past. It gives us the ability to combine all engine data for the station into one page, therefore making it easier to assess the station status.”

“We are very pleased with the convenience of obtaining our data reading automatically from the PowerData web site,” said Terrence Simmon, Power Station Operations Manager of the Sonesta Maho Beach Hotel in St. Maarten. “It has increased our reliability significantly.”

As the benefits of real-time data monitoring from a web browser become more apparent, Cameron Burn expects to see a growing demand for this use of the DataHub.

Industrial SaaS Whitepaper

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We just posted a new whitepaper discussion on “What is a Good Approach to Industrial SaaS.”  Software as a Service (“SaaS”) provides access to hosted software over a network, typically the Internet, and is closely related to the concepts of smart factories, cloud computing, industrial Internet, machine-to-machine (M2M), and the Internet of Things (IoT).

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” goes the old saying. How true that is in industrial control systems. … Factory automation, power generation, resource extraction and processing, transportation and logistics are all supported by chains of mechanisms, hardware, and software, as well as operators and engineers that must each carry out their mission to produce the expected output, product, or service.

The whitepaper goes into a discussion of the key qualities a what is necessary for widespread acceptance of industrial SaaS, such as:

  1. Security: industrial systems require the highest possible level of security, and achieving it over unsecured networks involves a comprehensive approach from the design stage of the overall system.
  2. Robustness: industrial software as a service should provide as close to real-time performance as the network or Internet infrastructure will support, such as milliseconds updates, thousands of data changes per second, and support redundant connections with hot swap over capability.
  3. Adaptability: industrial SaaS should be able to connect seamlessly to any new or installed system at any number of locations with no changes to hardware or software, using open data protocols and APIs, and readily scale up or down depending on user needs.
  4. Convenience: industrial SaaS should be convenient to use, from ease of demoing, to sign up, configuration, usage monitoring and low cost.  It should offer off-the-shelf tools to get your data to and from the cloud with no programming, provide the ability to easily integrate data from multiple sources, and include options like data storage and HMI displays–all without disrupting the industrial process in any way.

Read the Whitepaper.

Skkynet to Exhibit Cloud Solutions in Upcoming Executive Conferences

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Key decision-makers in manufacturing and control system integration will see SkkyHub™ in action.

Mississauga, Ontario, April 13, 2015 – Skkynet Cloud Systems, Inc. (“Skkynet” or “the Company”) (OTCQB:SKKY), a global leader in real-time cloud information systems, will present and demonstrate its SkkyHub™ service at the North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit on April 13-14 in Chicago, and at the Control System Integrators Association 2015 Executive Conference on April 29-May 2 in Washington D.C.

“These two conferences attract a broad cross-section of the key decision-makers in manufacturing and industrial automation,” said Paul Thomas, President of Skkynet. “Top executives from well-known manufacturers and leading system integration firms, as well as plant managers, supply chain leaders and OPEX executives will have an opportunity to see close up how Skkynet’s SkkyHub performs, and try it out for themselves.”

High on the agenda of both conferences is innovation and improvement on the state of the art for industrial automation. Keynotes and workshop subjects range from “Strategic Manufacturing” and “Lean & OPEX” to “The Future of Automation: Meeting the World’s Greatest Challenges.” Skkynet’s contribution to this conversation is to demonstrate a secure, robust, end-to-end solution for connecting plant systems to the cloud and interacting with them in real time, with no programming necessary. Support for both in-plant and field device connections allows plant engineers and system integrators to bridge the gap between industrial control systems and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Skkynet’s SkkyHub service allows industrial and embedded systems to securely network live data in real time from any location. Secure by design, it requires no VPN, no open firewall ports, no special programming, and no additional hardware. It enables bidirectional supervisory control, integration, and sharing of data with multiple users, and real-time access to selected data sets in a web browser. The service is capable of handling over 50,000 data changes per second per client, at speeds just a few milliseconds over Internet latency.

About Skkynet Cloud Systems, Inc.:

Skkynet Cloud Systems, Inc. (OTCQB:SKKY) is a global leader in real-time cloud information systems. The Skkynet Connected Systems platform includes the award-winning SkkyHub™ service, DataHub®, WebView™, and embedded toolkit software. The platform enables real-time data connectivity for industrial, embedded, and financial systems, with no programming required. Skkynet’s platform is uniquely positioned for the “Internet of Things” and “Industry 4.0” because unlike the traditional approach for networked systems, SkkyHub is secure-by-design. Customers include Microsoft, Siemens, Metso, ABB, Honeywell, IBM, GE, Statoil, Goodyear, BASF, Cadbury Chocolate, and the Bank of Canada. For more information, see http://skkynet.com.

Safe Harbor:

This news release contains “forward-looking statements” as that term is defined in the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements, including beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future, and results of new business opportunities. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors, such as the inherent uncertainties associated with new business opportunities and development stage companies. We assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that they will prove to be accurate. Investors should refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.