Reliability is of major importance in industrial environments. Siemens followed this theme in the development of the new Wireless product series SCALANCE W-700. In the labs of ComConsult Research these devices were checked out in recent weeks via detailed product tests. In our new Product Analysis you can read what the devices featured and, in particular, how they differ from known office products.
Highlights of the products are:
protection class IP65,
active and passive monitoring of process-critical clients,
power supply by practically all power sources available in the industrial environments,
redundant power supplies,
a QoS implementation to guaranty real-time communication of connected clients,
features to configure and monitor arbitrary wireless network structures,
redundant wireless connections with extremely fast recovery times.
In particular, the Dual Access Point W788-2PRO, from the examined device family, offers with its second radio interface even more possible applications. Thus, two very interesting developments allow the construction of redundant and fail-save wireless networks. First, Access Points can be connected by so-called WDS links (Wireless Distribution System) almost arbitrarily on radio; and second, each two of these Dual Access Points permit the definition of parallel, redundant radio links. Therefore, WDS links allow alternative uplinks and a redundant infrastructure for the clients. With the parallel radio links you can construct fail-safe wireless uplinks between two Dual Access Points in different frequency bands.
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