Stop Pulling Cables.
Deploy a Profinet Wireless Bridge Instantly.
Eliminate concrete trenching costs and slip ring failures. Our industrial Profinet wireless bridge and Layer 2 Mesh network seamlessly connect isolated PLCs and moving equipment (cranes/AGVs) to your SCADA—acting as an invisible Ethernet cable.
Explore Mesh Architecture ↓The Nightmare of Brownfield Networking
Trenching Concrete Costs
Customer wants to add a new water tank to the SCADA system, but it’s 300 feet across a busy factory floor. Trenching concrete and laying fiber is completely out of the budget.
Slip Ring & Festoon Failures
Overhead cranes and moving AGVs constantly wear out and break their physical festoon cables. These hardware failures lead to unpredictable and expensive unplanned downtime.
Layer 2 Protocol Drops
Standard 802.11 WiFi uses 3-address frames which mask original MAC addresses. Try passing Profinet or EtherNet/IP through a consumer bridge, and your remote PLCs will constantly drop and fault out due to MAC translation errors.
Our Strategy: Industrial Mesh & Roaming
1. 802.11s True Mesh Networking (No Line-of-Sight)
Factory floors are full of metal tanks and obstacles. Our VT-LTE400 gateways form a self-healing 802.11s Multi-hop Mesh Network. If one path is blocked by a moving truck, the signal automatically routes through another relay node to ensure data reaches the SCADA.
2. 802.11r Fast Roaming for Moving Equipment
Perfect for overhead cranes. Unlike standard WiFi which takes 300-500ms to reconnect (triggering PLC timeouts), our 802.11r FT (Fast Transition over the Air) protocol brings handoff times down to <50ms, keeping the PLC connection perfectly stable.
3. Layer 2 Transparent Bridging (Profinet Ready)
It acts exactly like an invisible physical Ethernet cable. By enabling 4-Address WDS (Relay Bridge mode) at the firmware level, the gateway fully supports Layer 2 transparency. Strict industrial protocols like Profinet and EtherNet/IP pass through seamlessly.
4. Built for High-Interference Environments
Worried about factory noise? Our nodes feature industrial-grade rugged enclosures, optimized dual-band concurrency, and a wide -40°C to 85°C operating range to ensure stability even alongside welding machines and large VFDs.
Common Engineering Scenarios
How to connect Profinet over WiFi without dropping packets?
Standard routers translate MAC addresses, breaking Profinet’s strict Layer 2 requirements. Using our VT-LTE400 gateways in Relay Bridge (WDS) Layer 2 Transparent mode preserves original MAC headers, allowing Profinet to pass flawlessly without PLC bus faults.
How to replace a broken festoon cable on an overhead crane?
Mount a Mesh Gateway on the crane cab and setup track-side access points. Utilizing 802.11r FT Over The Air roaming, the crane maintains a continuous <50ms connection to the main PLC as it moves, eliminating physical cable wear entirely.
Typical Application: Overhead Crane Retrofit
The Challenge
Overhead cranes commonly suffer from network downtime due to broken festoon cables. When using standard consumer WiFi to bridge the gap, ground-level PLCs (like Siemens S7 series) constantly drop Profinet packets due to MAC translation errors.
The Recommended Topology
Deploy two VT-LTE400 Gateways. One is hardwired to the main PLC, and the other is mounted on the moving crane. By activating the Layer 2 Transparent Bridge (WDS), the ground PLC instantly recognizes the crane’s Remote I/O natively.
Profinet Wireless Topology
[Main Plant PLC]
↓ Wired CAT6
[VT-LTE400 Gateway]
↓ 802.11s Layer 2 Wireless Link
[VT-LTE400 Gateway]
↓ Wired CAT6
[Crane Remote I/O]
Factory Floor Wireless Topology
Click the nodes to see how we bypass obstacles and connect moving machinery.
Node Info
Plant-Floor Networking Stack
* Everything you need to deploy a robust, interference-resistant industrial wireless network in an afternoon.
| Component | Role in Brownfield Network | Features |
|---|---|---|
|
Wireless Mesh Gateway VT-LTE400 Gateway → | Acts as Master, Relay, or Client node. Creates the invisible Ethernet backbone across your factory. |
• 802.11s Mesh & 802.11r Roaming • Includes Magnetic Extended Antennas • Layer 2 Transparent Bridging |
|
Industrial Unmanaged Switch Valtoris 5-Port / 8-Port Series | Aggregates multiple PLCs and HMIs inside a single remote cabinet to connect to one Wireless Gateway. |
• Plug-and-play Ethernet expansion • DIN-Rail mountable |
|
Edge Remote I/O Series |
Pairs seamlessly with Mesh network to collect analog and digital signals without needing a local PLC. Main SCADA reads it directly via Modbus TCP polling. Pro Tip: WiFi model works for standalone pumps! |
• 8 Channels (8DI / 8DO / 8AI) • Modbus TCP / RTU Support |
The Engineer’s Guide to Mesh & Layer 2 Bridging
Don’t let IT protocols confuse you. See exactly how we configure the 802.11s Mesh nodes and Layer 2 Relay Bridges inside the VT-LTE400 firmware.
WiFi_Mesh_Setup_Guide.pdf
✓ Step-by-step unredacted firmware setup screenshots.
Open access for field engineers. No email required.
