Dial in or internet

Doug_Adam

Member
Join Date
Sep 2002
Location
Perth
Posts
948
Recently, my company has had requests to provide remote dial in support for PLCs and other devices. The old way of doing this was via a modem (which I have seen done, but not actually done myself). Of course using this internet thingy that everyone is talking about is an obvious but possibly dangerous solution.
The question I have is does anyone have a good standard solution that they use?
Or is dial in still the best way to go?

A few pointers to get started would be nice.

The brands I currently support are :
Allen Bradley
Siemens
Pilz
IFM (CoDeSys)

Thanks in advance.

Doug
 
Even i am in the same situation ,my client has asked for the proper documentation for Internet Communication as well as Radio communication,since the distance is more than 10Kms . Internet is not a Dangerous thing ,as it doesn't have any Repeaters but u have to use a redundant dial in connection for that,in my opinion.
and also Cost effective!!.
And consider the monthly cost of using Internet data transfer as your requirement.
But above all it depends upon your requirement and scope.That u have to explain in brief.
 
Hi Peter,

The VPN approach looks most promising. Do you have any favorite hardware or software that you use for this?
 
The problem may be how to setup a VPN connection between the local and remote sites.
For small customer companies, they may not have a clue how to accomplish this.
For large customer companies, they may be unwilling to do it (damn IT departments).

A solution to this problem that we use is a special Router on the remote site. The router makes a connection out to the www, and accesses a site (talk2m). From my office, I can also connect to the talk2m site. On the talk2m site the two connections are merged together as a VPN connection to the router.

The result is that we have access to the network on the other site of the router. The customers IT department does not have to do anything, apart from granting access to the www via their own LAN. They can block our access to their servers etc. and feel safe.

Search for **** if this is an interesting way. The Router costs approx 1000 €.

So you can say to your customers: If you setup the VPN connection, you will get remote support for free (or much cheaper). If that is not possible, we can setup the special VPN Router and it will cost a bit extra.
 
I have gone the **** route, it is more expensive to set up but a lot less hassle than a 'roll your own VPN'. If you have a number of machines to talk to it is a breeze, you Log In using a program called eCatcher and you get a list of all your machines, click on 'Connect' for the one you want and you are connected to its LAN. If you don't want to have your machine connected to someone else's server then look at Westermo DR-250 ADSL router. This gives a similar set-up but all under your control. With all of these the big problem is getting an Internet connection to your machine, I often end up using a 3G type router to connect via the mobile phone network.

Bryan
 
We setup outside vendors w/ VPN accts that give them access only to a single system(or a small set of systems). Those systems are setup by us w/ all the software they need to do their remote work and are connected to the PLC systems on an as needed basis.

Works well for us.

Our whole network is Cisco based, But if you are looking for a cheaper VPN option you can also setup a router w/ either openWRT or dd-wrt running one of the VPN firmwares. This will give you PPTP(the basic windows VPN thingie does this) access to a vlan of your choosing.
 
I have been using a Vigor 2800, VPN Router at several sites and it works great. You will need a fixed IP address from your ISP. Once in place, you can connect to anything on the network; PC's PLC's etc.
 
I've seen it done with a Cisco 837 router with a dial-in backup. I don't know the particulars of how the Cisco VPN is done. Probably have to get with a IT person, sorry.
The guy using it to monitor his sytems bought it on Ebay for like $60 USD. Don't know if there was a setup charge.
I hope this helps. John
 
Thanks everyone for the advice.
It looks as if I have enough parts hanging around to make up a test system.

Thanks again,

Doug
 

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