October 2021, Fremont CA - Actelis Networks, the market leader in cyber-hardened, hybrid fiber-copper networking solutions for wide-area IoT applications, is delighted to announce that a large European energy provider has chosen Actelis to upgrade their network and provide connectivity to thousand of sensors.
The Challenge
The customer was looking to upgrade its large and widely spread utility network, mainly constructed of old copper infrastructure connecting all locations. Some areas of the network suffer from extremely low quality bad copper resulting in very low reliability and significantly low and insufficient bandwidth to support its communication needs. Many locations had a single copper line available to support the required communication.
Main Requirements
- Ring topologies, large - up to 30 devices per ring
To increase the service availability the customer was looking to create multiple RINGs connecting between sensors deployed across the network. Due to the size of the network the rings were expected to be large, including up to 30 devices per ring. - Extremely low power consumption by network element
Low power consumption of the network elements was required in order to allow the unit to be fed by backup batteries in the street cabinets in case of a power outage. - Single pair per location, low quality, bad copper
The solution was required to deliver the necessary bandwidth to aggregate all devices per one ring on a single copper pair, including over old, bad copper Hardened unit, outdoor installation, space constraint, DIN Rail
Installation within outdoor, space constrained cabinets.
The Solutions
Actelis’ industrial ML622D DIN Rail drop-and-continue was an ideal solution to all of the above requirements. Using Actelis’ unique technology, the ML622D managed to provide more than quadruple the bandwidth the legacy products supported, and due to its low power consumption, met all customer requirements.
In addition to the ML622D product, Actelis provided two major advantages for the customer.
- The ML6916EN compact high-density aggregator – major savings in power consumption, space, equipment, and maintenance.
ML6916EN aggregator supports up to 16 copper pairs in half of a 19” rack with a height of 1U. Deploying ML6916EN as the headend unit offered a simpler network in which a single device supports up to 10 rings replacing a configuration of 10 separate devices each supporting its own single ring. Thus, deployment provided major savings in power consumption, space, equipment, and maintenance. - Actelis’ MetaASSIST EMS – Comprehensive platform for easier, more intuitive and effective network management
Actelis’ MetaASSIST EMS provides a comprehensive set of management tools including an advanced Layer 1 (L1) Topology View that is especially useful when viewing more complex configurations, such as drop-and-continue or ring architecture, in which the Tree view provides limited understanding of the network topology. The Actelis L1 Topology View allows MetaASSIST EMS clients to view the network topology using easy-to-understand graphics, including visual tools to provide the user with an easy and instant grasp of the topology, connectivity type and status of a link or a connected device. L1 topology is automatically updated to immediately echo any changes in the network.
To learn more about Actelis’ L1 Topology View please click here
The combination of Actelis’ ML622D DIN rail device, ML6916EN aggregator, and the advanced MetaASSIST EMS platform allowed the customer to successfully upgrade their network and continue to monitor the network easily and efficiently.