Whether on the front burner or back burner, implementing wireless for your industrial application is probably somewhere on your stove top. Before you simmer, boil or decide to toss the whole concoction out, I urge you to take another look.

In a recent blog article – Chicken, Egg, and Chicken Omelette with Salsa – Dale Peterson is squawking like a rooster. Nothing new, but this time his message is scrambled. He once again referred to me as a SCADA Apologist, though this time he also labeled me the “salsa” that accompanies a chicken omelette. While I responded to his opinion in my January 30 blog post, I’d like to revisit this spicy topic.

Recently there was a thread on SCADASEC news, a restricted access critical infrastructure mailing list, about the challenges of firewalling BACnet networks. If you only work in the industrial automation space, you may not have heard of this protocol, but it is big in building automation. Regardless, the discussion around BACnet applies to many industrial protocols.

Looking back in time it might be fair to say that smoke signals used during America’s Wild West days were one of the original wireless communications. For their era, they were pretty effective. Sending information quickly across distances is still important. Traditionally, landlines and wired connectivity have provided the best communications solutions. If it is not possible to link systems by wires, communication has been very difficult, particularly for industrial applications.

When you have equipment old enough to remember the Eisenhower administration (or even the Carter administration) it is important to have a plan before you have a problem.