Industrial Wireless:Beware of COTS, This is a tip of Broken Signal Solutions.
Just because 802.11 is a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) standard doesn’t mean that COTS products can be used in the industrial environment, warns Advantech’s Lochhaas. Industrially hardened access points “will survive in the industrial environment when exposed to extremes of temperature, dust, humidity, hazardous vapors and other common situations,” he says. “So when selecting your industrial wireless products, be certain to determine their suitability for the service you wish to use them in.”
E-lins notes, “Industrial environments are harder on wireless than any office would ever be,” which can drastically shorten the useful lifespan of wireless equipment. You get what you pay for in this world, and using office-grade networking equipment to save small amounts of money upfront will turn out to be a huge mistake when you have to pay for it later with downtime and repairs.”
E-lins’s comments could serve as a handy maxim to guide your approach not just to COTS components, but to wireless implementation in general.
