Ruijie Networks: Deeply cultivating production network application scenarios to make the industrial Internet worry-free

Ruijie Networks is a Chinese ICT infrastructure and solution provider. It has been focusing on "scenario-based" innovation for many years. By deeply penetrating the front-line scenarios of manufacturing companies, it has designed customized network solutions for them and promoted the construction of the domestic industrial Internet.

Industrial Internet has always been a hot keyword. 2018 is known as the "first year" of the development of Industrial Internet. Since then, the industry has been discussing Industrial Internet. At this year's two sessions, Industrial Internet was once again written into the government work report. This is the fourth consecutive year that Industrial Internet has been written into the government work report.

The next three years will be a period of rapid growth for the industrial Internet. In order to further consolidate and improve the development results and better plan and promote the development work in the next stage, in February 2021, the Industrial Internet Special Working Group formulated and issued the "Industrial Internet Innovation and Development Action Plan (2021-2023)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Three-Year Action Plan").

As one of the three major functional systems of the industrial Internet, the network is an important foundation for the development of the industrial Internet. The "Three-Year Action Plan" proposes that in the next three years, the network field will continue to focus on building a network infrastructure that supports the interconnection of all industrial factors, the entire industrial chain, and the entire value chain, accelerate the construction and transformation of enterprise extranets and enterprise intranets, and enhance basic support capabilities. Promote the transformation of enterprise intranets from "single-link transformation" to "systematic interconnection". Promote the digitalization and networking transformation of industrial production equipment and instrumentation to make dumb equipment "alive"; use advanced and applicable network technology to build an IT-OT converged network to "connect" the entire industrial process.

[[394997]]

Ruijie Networks is a Chinese ICT infrastructure and solution provider. It has been focusing on "scenario-based" innovation for many years. It has promoted the construction of the domestic industrial Internet by deeply understanding the front-line scenarios of manufacturing enterprises and designing customized network solutions for them. e-works conducted an exclusive interview with Ye Yongjun, Director of Solutions for the Enterprise Industry Department of Ruijie Networks. Ye Yongjun shared with reporters Ruijie Network's market observations and application practices for the industrial Internet. He also discussed in detail how to build a network system suitable for enterprise production scenarios and help customers cope with the challenges of digital transformation, bringing new thinking to enterprises in promoting the construction of the industrial Internet.

[[394998]]

Figure Ye Yongjun, Director of Enterprise Industry Solutions, Ruijie Networks

01

Join the “big rivers” of the industrial Internet‍

The accelerated development of new digital infrastructure and the accelerated application of the industrial Internet will undoubtedly become powerful engines for the digitalization of China's manufacturing industry.

In Ye Yongjun's view, the Industrial Internet is undoubtedly the future development direction of domestic manufacturing enterprises. The construction of the Industrial Internet is of great significance for enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, enhance the competitiveness of their products, and even build an international brand of "Made in China".

Ruijie Networks is also a member of the National Industrial Internet Industry Development Alliance. Based on years of practical experience in the industry, Ye Yongjun observed that although industry standards are constantly being improved at the national level, the level of industrial Internet development in the domestic manufacturing industry is uneven. Among them, industries that are strongly related to the Internet industry, such as electronic information and consumer industries, are moving faster. Among traditional enterprises, the leading enterprises have played a greater role in leading the development of the industry's industrial Internet.

So, what capabilities does the construction of the Industrial Internet require of enterprises? Ye Yongjun believes that there are mainly three aspects:

● The first is the connectivity of the enterprise industrial Internet. Although there is a lot of talk about the industrial Internet and digital transformation, for many domestic small and medium-sized enterprises, the collection and storage of on-site data and the interconnection of systems are still a hurdle that has not been overcome.

● The second is cloud-based service capabilities. From cloud platforms to underlying applications, how companies can use cloud platforms to accelerate their digital, networked, and intelligent transformation and effectively improve their management level and overall competitiveness is a question that managers must consider.

● The third is data governance capabilities. The Industrial Internet is just a tool. After collecting a large amount of data and even building a data middle platform, we must consider how to further mine the data value for the use of enterprises, realize data-driven, and let the Industrial Internet play its value.

[[394999]]

Focusing on the first two capabilities, Ruijie Networks takes actual production scenarios as the entry point to help enterprises solve the pain points and difficulties in network construction. Ye Yongjun believes that in the process of digital transformation of enterprises, high business continuity, high business experience, and high reliability and security of the network are required as guarantees. In this regard, Ruijie Networks starts from the two aspects of "terminal" and "access" to help enterprises smoothly implement the industrial Internet.

02

Based on manufacturing scenario

Building best network application practices

The development of network technology has evolved from basic information transmission to today's diverse business flow transmission. Network-based information systems are rapidly penetrating into various links of manufacturing office, R&D, production, sales and supply chain. Ye Yongjun proposed that the value of building a network suitable for production scenarios for enterprises lies not only in supporting existing businesses, but also in providing support for the innovation, transformation and development of future applications of enterprises.

For example, with the advancement of the industrial Internet, the number of connected devices in enterprises is bound to increase. How to meet the explosive growth demand in the face of a large number of connected devices and real-time data in the future? This high-speed connection and concurrent use are directly related to the experience of factory business system users. In addition, due to the increase in handheld terminals and AGVs, the wireless signal in the transmission process is unstable or has no coverage, and transmission data is often lost, and the channel bandwidth utilization rate decreases, which has become one of the pain points.

[[395000]]

"Production scenarios are different from general commercial scenarios. Any service interruption caused by unreliable network will bring huge business risks and financial losses to the enterprise, so there are extremely high requirements for network availability and reliability." Based on this, Ruijie Networks has explored the network characteristics in production scenarios to the extreme, forming wireless networks and wireless zero roaming solutions focusing on device terminals, as well as network security and cloud desktop solutions centered on network access.

Faced with the choice of wired and wireless during terminal access, as well as the reliability challenges in wireless network environments, Ruijie Networks provides wireless networks with uninterrupted production, real-time data acquisition, and zero roaming.

On the one hand, wireless networks can help enterprises' CNC machine tools and other machines to smoothly access network equipment, so as to reduce the time loss caused by flexible production line changes by avoiding wiring and construction. For example, for 7,200 machine tools in an electronics factory in Zhejiang, Ruijie Networks deployed wireless networks for them, used industrial gateways and industrial wireless to collect machine tool data, statistically analyzed machine production capacity, equipment utilization rate, tool information, and provided predictive maintenance information, helping enterprises reduce tool loss and improve management efficiency, ultimately achieving a 60% reduction in labor costs, a 75% increase in tool change efficiency, and a 10% increase in machine utilization rate.

On the other hand, in the face of the discontinuous packet loss and low latency requirements of mobile terminals and AGVs for wireless network roaming, Ruijie Networks has deployed dual-link gateways on AGVs and the same-frequency networking method for wireless networks to solve the problem of real-time online data without interruption and roaming stickiness during mobile roaming. This solution is deployed in the smart warehousing scenario of a large e-commerce company in Hangzhou. Ruijie Networks deployed 2.4G and 5G dual-link gateways for AGVs, so that the signal switching is controlled within the industrial gateway, ensuring that the roaming packet loss rate is less than 0.01% and the average roaming latency is less than 10ms.

In order to solve the network security boundary problems brought about by the construction of the industrial Internet, Ruijie Networks has also differentiated the access strategies for terminals in different scenarios, such as business networks, guest networks, and office networks, and allocated resources with different permissions to terminals of different roles. In addition, Ruijie Networks' access strategy adopts a single domain egress dedicated network and a full range of wireless threat protection strategies, combined with a threat intelligence active defense system, to make the office network security visible and understandable, truly realizing the security of the factory network without blind spots.

In addition, in order to cope with the operation and maintenance difficulties of PC deployment in the production environment and the demand for rapid line change of flexible production lines. Ruijie Networks adopts a new generation of IDV (Integrated Intelligent Desktop Virtualization) cloud desktop to meet the reliability requirements in production scenarios. "The advantage of IDV is that it has local storage and processing capabilities, which can greatly reduce the pressure on the back-end server and get rid of the dependence on high bandwidth." Even if there are problems such as server downtime or network interruption, IDV can still operate normally, ensuring the business continuity of the production line . It is worth mentioning that based on IDV, the operating system and software images required for products of different specifications can also be configured for flexible production lines. When the production line needs to be changed and adjusted, the corresponding operating system and application software can be quickly pushed, and the computer image can be updated within 3-5 minutes.

03

Continuous innovation

Customer-centric application of new technologies

"Being close to customer usage scenarios and having insight into customer needs have always been Ruijie Networks' core competitiveness." Ruijie Networks believes that only by increasing insights into customer scenarios can it provide enterprise customers with more diversified and high-quality network solutions.

On March 5 this year, Premier Li Keqiang mentioned in the Government Work Report that efforts should be made to intensify the construction of 5G networks and gigabit optical networks and enrich application scenarios.

Ruijie Networks is also continuously innovating and actively empowering customers through new technologies. Ye Yongjun introduced that new technologies such as 5G, AI, and optical networks are powerful drivers of the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry in the future, and are also the technological frontiers that Ruijie Networks is exploring.

[[395001]]

In terms of 5G applications, Ruijie Networks is working with operators and manufacturing companies to explore 5G solutions for the Industrial Internet. Ruijie Networks has more outstanding advantages in 5G service deployment, latency, cost and scenario applications.

In terms of optical network construction, Ruijie Networks has combined the iteration of Ethernet architecture and optical fiber media to form a minimalist Ethernet all-optical solution. In addition to the benefits of high bandwidth, low latency, high speed, and low cost brought by optical fiber, it also has a powerful architecture design that covers multiple scenarios and multiple services with an Ethernet all-optical network, supporting the business evolution of enterprises in the next ten years through a single deployment.

In the new stage of the development of the domestic industrial Internet, Ruijie Networks' characteristics and advantages of deeply cultivating user scenarios are becoming increasingly clear. "In the future, Ruijie Networks will adhere to 'scenario-based' innovation, give full play to its own advantages in technology, products, and solutions in the field of network communications, polish solutions that are truly suitable for customers, and help them solve real problems in reality." Ye Yongjun concluded.

Ruijie Networks recent activities recommended