Ah, no. Definitely not.
Now you’ve broken the basic knowledge of every breakdown tech you employ.
Also, you have to do this on every device plant wide every time the network runs out of addresses.
Every OT network consultant I have ever met or seen online makes serious $$ removing flat networks set up across entire plants.
I must have had smarter technicians! We were running on a /21 subnet but we gave the guys some training. We also created a Perspective app to record the IP address assignments, etc., (rather than an Excel sheet) and connection status, which made much of this very easy to maintain and to look up.
That is achievable, but given that all the industry designs use subnetting, there isn't any demand for all that extra effort.
As an integrator, we see hundreds of factories and I've only been to one that had any guys that knew what a subnet mask even does. I have also had to segment many networks because of issues with flat networks.
I see lots of factories, and I would say the majority are using /22 or /23 subnets.
I've just decided to start using email-to-SMS. It's amazing to me that Inductive Automation would only provide such limited integrations for their SMS module. To me, that kind of goes against the 'play nice with everything' principles of Ignition.
We are only notifying about 6 people, so I just found out who their mobile carrier is and sent an email to their SMS gateway, for example PhoneNumber@vtext.com (verizon's sms gateway.)
You can expect email-to-SMS to stop working. Verizon does not support that any more, AFAIK.
Seems WAY too easy for some low life scum to code something to bulk send to a lot of people to try to scam them with how easy that is... Not surprised they would move away from it!!
Well that sucks. And so does the SMS module for Ignition, with it's very limited integrations. I guess I will just have to go the route of using a GSM modem integrated with the PLC.
Why use Verizon? There are many other email to SMS services all over the internet, all of them will work just as well?
He's talking about the email-to-SMS that every carrier (used to?) offer for free, not a separate service.
i.e. all the numbers he needs to send SMS to use Verizon, and Verizon will forward <number>@vtext.com to the verizon subscriber number.
Ah, nothing like relying on free services for production ready solutions.
Hey Judgey McJudgerson...this isn't for anything mission critical. It's to notify 6 people we had a power outage. For the application, free sounds about right.
My experience with Verizon email to sms is that it will work ok at first but after a few messages are sent it becomes very slow - taking hours or even days to arrive. ATT will stop all support on June 17th, 2025. I am skeptical about 3rd party apps circumventing this delay. I tried a couple last year to no avail.
Not sure why Nebul0us is unhappy with using a Sierra Wireless gateway. I have never had any trouble with many I have used.
I'm only going off the information that I've been told, which is that they introduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
The Sierra wireless module is designed to be the path to the internet for a remote site. When you install it inside an existing network, it does not have the ability to be configured as only an SMS dialler, and it will form a bypass for the main firewall of the network. This basically forms a weak point for the network. Couple this with the sierra releasing instructions on adding a gateway address to the unit by making the 4G connection into a LAN connection, which disables the firewall completely and trusts the internet connections...
This is why it is not a great option.
You didn't exactly lead with that...
Twilio is probably still the best option.
The next best options would be developing alternatives, like profiles supporting Amazon's AWS End User Messaging SMS, or Verizon's EMAG, but these are just more proprietary Twilio alternatives and not generic solutions.
Right now I'm leaning towards a ProSoft Technology ICX35-HWC and just integrating it with the PLC directly. Any drawbacks with this approach?
I'm curious to know why Ignition only has an API for Sierra Wireless products...
This thing looks more or less the same as a Sierra Wireless device in terms of potential security issue...
Have used these a bunch, they show up in the PLC as a generic EIP device, and you use a custom AOI to talk to them.
Pros:
I have seen them work fine for years.
You can get multiple PLCs to use them directly as it is EIP explicit messaging based.
They support normal network functions like routing.
Cons:
Very temperamental to set up and not great documentation.
If you have a bunch of alarms, you have to write a lot of code in the PLC to ensure you aren't spamming SMS.
There is a bunch of logic needed to facilitate the SMS sending and receiving, FIFO etc.
They only support 5 mobile numbers when you send the messages, so you have to copy them in and out as you go if you have more than 5.
They are normally not liked by IT because they are marketed as a 4G VPN Dial-in service... Security issues yet again. They use a Belden Horizon VPN service which is also pricey. You can disable the VPN and data access though.
Rockwell only.