Factorytalk 9 - Cellular Modem - High Data Usage

Hey guys, I have an SE deployment at a plant where it is monitoring several remote sites that utilize cellular modems for internet connectivity.

The data usage is a big concern and I am trying to figure out if there is a way to get SE to slow down its tag update rate.

I only found a Max Tag update rate in the display settings, and that...did nothing to improve our data usage. Guessing it is for a time-out instead of polling rate.

Any help?

There are quite a few different places for data rates in FactoryTalk View SE.
Here are all the places that I can think of:

Display settings, for each display
HMI alarm setup
Events
Datalogs
Derived Tags


Also check to see if your displays are set to "Yes" for cache after displaying and always updating.
You should NOT have always updating set, if you want to keep data usage low.


After that, you may need to re-organize your tags. The lowest data usage will have all your display tags (for one display) in a single array. That goes for INT, DINT and BOOL.

Single BOOL is actually Tx as a DINT; No savings.
String tags in any form will use a lot a Tx data.
UDTs do not offer any Tx savings.



Put these tags onto a (OnTop) display, and open it during runtime. This will give you an idea if your cell connection is maxed out or not.

Example. If you have 5 optimized packets and your display update rate is 1 second then you would expect to see a PacketPerSecond of 5.
If your actual packets per second is less than that, then the HMI is asking for data too quickly. Which means, you'll end up sending another request before the last one has finished and in time overload the comms network.



Well, that's a lot and a good place to start. Take a look at those update settings.
If that doesn't fix it post back your optimized packet and packets per second counts.

Is the Data Usage a concern because you are seeing an increase in the monthly billing rate? If this is the case it may not be because of the actual data being conversed across the cellular connection but and increase in "HACK" attempts!!

Look at the "detail bill" for each connection if you see alot of suspicious IP address as the source then that is your problem.

If this is the problem then the only "Fix" will be ask you ISP to change over to a Private Network, this way the cellular IP address will no longer be public.

Just something you may need to be aware of.