Conference proceeding
A Graduate Engineering Technology Course in Networks for the Industrial Environment
Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers, p25.53.1
10 Jun 2012
Abstract
A Graduate Engineering Technology Course in Networks for the Industrial EnvironmentThis paper describes the development of a new graduate engineering technology course inadvanced networks for industrial environments. The course is intended to provide an in-depthoverview of high-performance wired and wireless networks for industrial control,communications, and computing. In the past, the topic of industrial data networks focused onnetworks designed for control, data acquisition, or remote sensing, but increasingly industrialnetworks are used to connect computers in industrial settings. These computers may be desktopsor laptops, or they can be small, single-chip microcontrollers costing less than a dollar, but stillconnected to a network. Furthermore, few modern companies could exist without email, webpages or web-based accounting and data backup systems. Networks for all these applications arebeginning to share Internet-like features, including network protocols and hardware. There arethree reasons for this—first, the explosion in Internet-based networking technologies as well asresearch in improving them have dramatically driven their cost down while increasingavailability and quality. Second, the concerns for both applications are the same—performance,cost, reliability, and security. Finally, Internet-based manufacturing is becoming an importantnew technology. As a result, an Internet-like approach to understanding these networks is taken.The emphasis is on understanding current and newly emerging network architectures, protocols,and technologies in terms of performance, network services, ease of implementation,maintenance, reliability, risk, and cost. The course begins with an introduction to what networkprotocols are, using the example of collision detection in the context of ordinary conversation.The use of this technique in first generation Ethernet is then described. This is followed by adiscussion of protocol standardization efforts and layered protocols. Circuit and packet switchingare compared with respect to performance, ease of implementation, and cost. Statistical methodsand industry-standard CAD tools used in performance modeling are then described. Theintroduction concludes with a discussion of physical media, including copper wire, wireless, andfiber optic cable, with an emphasis on cost-performance tradeoffs.Following the introduction a detailed description of each of the layers of the TCP/IP protocolstack is presented. A top-down approach is used, starting with the Application and Transportlayers and ending with the Network Access layer. Next, a number of network protocols used inindustry are described in detail, beginning with Ethernet. Ethernet is not only ubiquitous incommunications systems but is also widely used in industrial control. This is followed by adescription of representative industry-specific protocols such as CAN and DPN3. Wirelessnetwork protocols such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee are then described. The courseconcludes with a discussion of network performance and security.The course is currently offered entirely online. Two of the key challenges in developing thecourse were an emphasis on hands-on experience and the ability to support real-time studentproject presentations. To provide hands-on experience with network protocols, experiments withtwo industry-standard modeling and evaluation tools, OPNET’s IT Guru and Wireshark, are used.OPNET is a network traffic simulator used for packet-level performance analysis of metrics suchas throughput and delay. Wireshark is an open-source network protocol analyzer. Students canfreely download IT Guru and Wireshark and perform the experiments on their own computers.Both Wimba Live Classroom and Adobe Connect are available to support real-time studentpresentations.
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Details
- Title
- A Graduate Engineering Technology Course in Networks for the Industrial Environment
- Creators
- Warren RosenM Carr
- Publication Details
- Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers, p25.53.1
- Publisher
- American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Engineering Leadership and Society/Engineering Technology
- Identifiers
- 991019170545204721