Industrial Network Infrastructure

 

The industrial business sector is evolving, for this reason, organizations need to upgrade their network infrastructure and connectivity between industrial assets, local, central applications, and systems. As they adapt, challenges arise from multiple domains, such as traffic visibility, network security, and performance.

Asset Visibility

Its initial difficulty is directly related to the visibility of the traffic, which has an impact on the network topology. Most industrial companies find it difficult to see their resources and assets, which prevents them from having full control over their network and infrastructure, equipment, and materials.

Complete visibility of network traffic is possible thanks to the implementation of network TAPs in the infrastructure. Network TAPs are independent hardware devices that make an exact copy of all traffic that flows between two endpoints on a network. They are generally preferred because they are reliable compared to SPAN ports and they offer flexibility in how they pass traffic to the monitor port.

Network Performance & Availability

Additional problems emerge as more devices are connected. The network will require greater capacity, and OT network vulnerabilities could cause expensive damages, mostly as a result of OT Systems becoming unavailable.

To prepare your network for future growth, Network Critical’s hybrid TAPs & Packet Brokers are an effective and affordable solution. Providing highly scalable bandwidth availability that adapts to different speeds, it prevents network congestion and offers optional fiber interfaces to allow long-distance data transmission from field sites back to the control room.

The 'Broker' in Network Packet Broker refers to its ability to combine, integrate, separate, manipulate and process inputs from many sources, delivering the data to a wide variety of appliance and tool destinations. Also, they guarantee fail-safe operation avoiding the risk of network disruption as a result of power interruption or failure of an appliance. Delivering the right data to the right tool will optimize security and performance.

Security & Emerging Threats

Regarding security issues, traditional OT organizations were not connected, and as organizations connect more devices and equipment, the surface attack increases, and more cyber attacks are targeted at OT networks. Sadly, most industrial networks' security flaws and gaps are only found after a security breach has taken place. Moreover, there are unquestionably inherent network dangers and vulnerabilities that will arise from the integration of these current systems with information technology data networks.

With the rapid growth of Industrial Networks, different levels of security must be considered. From protecting sensitive/confidential information with packet modification, or real-time traffic monitoring, to preventing unauthorized access to the network with zero-trust technologies. All these solutions are available with Network Critical’s products, safeguarding your business from emerging threats with different and complementary levels of security.

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It is clear that the evolution of industrial networks is inevitable, and there are many things to be developed and improved, and therefore organizations need to analyze their situation and define a clear network strategy to achieve the optimal stage. Network Critical expert team is ready to help you find the perfect solution for your network’s needs. For more information, contacts us at www.networkcritical.com/contact-us

Cable Troubleshooting Example

 Another job and another example of an Ethernet coupler causing challenges.

In this case, we upgraded some old 10/100Mb switches to 1 Gb switches. As part of my methodology, I typically get all the devices connected in, make sure everything is up and running, then clear the port statistics (when possible), check the ports for speed/duplex and errors after a minimum of an hour or so of operation.

You can do this via CLI, web interface, customized scripts or SNMP. As long as you can reliably collect the data, you are in good shape. Don’t forget to document how you gathered the data, date, time, and collection period.

In this example, I noticed the connection between the switches was running at 100Mb full duplex which was odd since both switches have 1 Gb ports. I grabbed my cable tester, but as you will see in the video, this isn’t a requirement. Tested from the tester directly connected to the switch ports and both tested at 1 Gb full duplex. Then I used the existing switch-to-switch connection with the cable tester and it came back as 100 Mb full duplex. Ran a TDR and saw that there was a spike midway through the cable, indicating the cable has been repaired or reconnected in some way. I went for a walk and Bingo!, an inline Ethernet coupler. Looked pretty old and no one knew it was there because "everything worked fine".

I didn’t have a coupler to swap it out with, so I used an unmanageable gig switch since they had a few laying around as a test point. I disconnected the coupler and connected the cables to the switch. The 1 Gb port lights on the switch lit up and I confirmed on both switch ports that the corresponding ports were now 1 Gb. We cleared the port counters, let the traffic run through the port as we cleaned up and labeled equipment. We came back an hour later and confirmed that the port was running fine with no errors.

As I said in the video, I did not recommend they leave the switch in permanently, especially this one being a switch-to-switch port. I told them they basically have 2 options; replace this switch with a better manageable switch or pull a new cable run.

Wireshark File Merge

 For those of you familiar with my articles, who worked with me, or who attended any of my sessions, you will quickly notice that I am not one for long flowery speeches. In my classes, I don’t start with the history of technology or networking and pretty well dive right in.

When I’m working on-site, I don’t spend a lot of time in meetings discussing stuff. As far as I’m concerned, my time is limited, just give me someone to work with, and we can chat while working.

This time, I was updating my Wireshark course material for a corporate training session and thought I would share some tips or tricks along the way.

This one is simple, 2 ways to merge Wireshark trace files.

WiFi or LAN Traffic?

 I was working with a client on their proposed new laptop build and they brought up the topic of WiFi vs Lan. For those who are not familiar, we were wondering how does the laptop behave if it is connected to the network via WiFi, and then you connect the ethernet port, docking station or similar dongle.

Since I know these guys for a while, we can be frank and candid. I told them “Listen guys, I don’t want to spend time looking into theories that you may have ‘heard, read about or the vendor told me.” My question was “Have you personally tested this out?” The short answer was “No”.

I then said “Great, lets quickly test for ourselves and get it over with.” This was met with the typical reasons why they don’t have the “Time to do this”, etc….. After about 2 minutes of listening to them argue amongst themselves, I interrupted and said “The time you spent avoid this, could have easily been spent testing.”. I explained that the test will only take a minute, maybe two.

In the following video I show you exactly how we did it and the odd Wireshark tip along the way.