March 14, 2000
Control Engineering
DAILY NEWS DESK

Making them talk:
Lantronix uses device serial ports for Ethernet communications

Networking is great for new installations. "But what about all the existing equipment without networking abilities and without Ethernet ports?" asks Mark Fondl, VP and General Manager, Automation Business Unit, Lantronix (Irvine, Calif.).

Lantronix provides network-enabling technology that allows nearly any device to communicate over the Internet and shared networks. Lantronix’s Device Servers bring high-speed networking and remote management to unconnected legacy devices via existing serial ports.

For manufacturers seeking to network-enable current products, Lantronix also provides embedded board-level solutions that accelerate time-to-market, in addition to technology licensing for network-enabling next-generation products.

Mr. Fondl, previously with Schneider Automation, now helps Lantronix sell its Device Servers to companies, including Schneider Automation, which sells Lantronix products as a bridge between Modbus and TCP/IP protocols.

Ethernet future

Capturing and exposing device data as enterprise information—implementing plant/enterprise integration—gives companies a competitive advantage, he suggests. Ethernet and TCP/IP are becoming the standard plumbing of the information age. This structure allows Web based technologies (HTML and HTTP) to also be implemented everywhere. The Automation industry is seeing a growing number of applications switching to Ethernet. Whether it can solve every problem is still under debate, however its use in the automation industry is not debatable.

"Future industrial automation will rely on standards-based Ethernet solutions," Mr. Fondl says. Connecting islands of automation "will allow companies to increase productivity and make production facilities dramatically more efficient."

For example, plant managers with that information could monitor all production from anywhere a LAN connection is available, then troubleshoot problems immediately. In the past, they had to review "batch processed" information, analyze the data, then make appropriate changes, which could mean running at less-than-optimal, or even out-of-spec, conditions for some time.

Existing devices overlooked

Automation manufacturers fighting the fieldbus wars overlooked the large number of devices with pure serial connections, such as RS-232, he says. Lantronix moved to take serial protocols 232 or 485 and layer those communications on top of TCP/IP. "If you really start to look at communications, probably more than 90% of intelligent devices have serial ports and a vast majority are not connected,’’ Mr. Fondl says.

One of biggest costs in a plant is service and support of the variety of intelligent devices (PLCs, drives, weighing systems, power monitors, labeling, bar coding, and vision), which most require local connection for reprogramming, or configuration changes. Lantronix software fools the computer into giving the port an IP address on the local area network (LAN). The connecting PC thinks it's a local connection, but it’s really connected over the LAN, he says. This is done with little to no changes in the device’s original programming or configuration software, allowing remote access by people or newly developed revision control software.

"With Ethernet networks going into plants for other reasons, we can just tap in." Information packet sizes are small, so bandwidth or network loading isn’t a concern. The application is more like monitoring, rather than real-time I/O network requirements.

"This is a large advantage for equipment vendors, many of whom are not network experts," Mr. Fondl says. "Many people say, ‘I didn't know you could do this with networks.’"

New life

Potential is large. "You see millions of devices out there," Mr. Fondl says eagerly. "We're breathing life into them."

Lantronix recently received an award from Frost & Sullivan (Mountain View, Calif.) for work in using Ethernet for automation/enterprise integration. Lantronix, founded in commercial networking technologies, says it has 1.8-million nodes installed globally.

Mr. Fondl, in addition to serving at vice president of marketing at Schneider Automation, held key positions at Siemens and Texas Instruments. He also served for three years on the board of directors of Fieldbus Foundation.

For more information, visit www.lantronix.com. For more information on weaving "Enterprise Integration," see Control Engineering’s February cover story.

Mark T. Hoske, editor-in-chief
Control Engineering March 14, 2000