Multitech Conduit deployment options

[Davy De Waele]

I’m looking at some different deployment options using MultiTech Conduit gateways and I’m looking for some input. The idea is to come up with a model that works on different customer sites where we often see that 1 single Conduit does not provide sufficient range to cover the complete site.

Some questions that I have

– How to approach extending the range of a conduit on industrial sites.
– How do you position the embedded Lora Network Server on the Conduit ? Is it only used for smaller deployments, and is there an option for a cloud based solution ?
– How about using external cloud based LoraWAN servers to add scale / robustness. Does Multitech have such an offering or do we need to setup something ourselves or use an off-the-shelf external service for that.
– Other MultiTech Conduit cloud based services I’m perhaps not aware of.

Here are the different deployment options I’m seeing:

a) Single Conduit acting as Packet FW + Lora Server

– This is a typical setup for small scale deployments.
– However, if certain sensors fall out of range another solution is needed.

b) Multiple Conduits / Single Lora Network Server

– Here, extra Conduits would be used as range extenders and these extra conduits are setup as packet forwarder to 1 Single Conduit that runs the lora server.
– The single Conduit acting as a Lora Network server accepts remote connections from the packet forwarders on its UDP ports.
– This single conduit could be considered a single point of failure, and it is difficult to setup Lora Servers on Conduits in high-available mode.

c) Multiple gateways / Single Lora Network Server

– Small variation from the previous deployment.
– Here, multiple gateways are deployed only this time both Conduits and other off-the-shelf gateways).
– They all act as packet forwarders and 1 Conduit is configured a the Lora server. It will contain the “known” sensor config, handle de-duplication / decryption of payloads.
– This single Lora Server would be a single point of failure and could become a potential bottleneck as it is difficult (or even impossible) to scale.
– having multiple lora servers in the architecture would lead to issues upstream I guess ? duplicate messages and such.

d) Multiple gateways / Cloud LoRaWAN server

– Here, the Lora Server runs in the cloud and all Conduits are setup as packet forwarders.
– The cloud based lorawan server will contain the “known” sensor config, handle de-duplication / decryption of payloads
– The advantage here would be a more robust LoRaWAN architecture where proper failover can be configured in the cloud.

[Steve Kovarik]

Hi Davy

Today MultiTech’s Conduit Gateways support….
a) Single Conduit acting as Packet FW + Lora Server

This allows our customers to create their own private LoRa Network.

d) Multiple gateways / Cloud LoRaWAN server

This allows our customers to use multiple gateways as packet forwarders
in a public LoRa Network environment where multiple gateways are needed
to add scale.

We are currently working on solutions that address the other scenarios you
describe. However I am unable to describe in detail until we are closer to
release in early 2018. Hope this is helpful.

-Best Regards

[Author]

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