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Over the past twenty years our lives have been influenced through advancements in wireless technologies. Smart phones and connected devices are prevalent, inexpensive, and reliable approaches to life and comfort management. This articles discusses how Pelican incorporates wireless into their commercial climate management solution and how our approach differentiates us from other technologies.
When Pelican ventured into the field of commercial climate management, wireless communication and Internet connected devices were relatively unheard of. Connected thermostats were rare. Building Automation Systems were standardizing on a wired communication network and protocol. And technologies like wireless headphones or wireless watches were a fantasy, to say the least. We were at the forefront of innovation and invented a new approach to enterprise level network communication.
Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a communication infrastructure made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. It is also a form of wireless ad hoc networking. A wireless ad hoc network means it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points in managed wireless networks. (“Wireless Mesh Network” and “Wireless Ad Hoc Network,” Wikipedia).
We hear about wireless mesh networks from a variety of different companies serving different markets and needs. In Pelican’s case we utilize a wireless mesh network architecture designed specifically for the scale, data rate size, and security needs of our markets (commercial/government/enterprise/school districts/etc. climate management).
When we speaks about wireless we are talking about how Pelican devices, which are spread around a building or campus, communicate securely and automatically to reach your Pelican Web-App. Our architecture was invented so you can streamline the installation and gain real-time control, at a fraction of the cost to our competitors.
Our wireless architecture is built specifically for our technology (climate management) and our markets (commercial/government/enterprise/school districts/etc.). We developed our wireless to maintain separation between your business network (WiFi), to scale to a wide variety of different building/campus layouts, and to be self-creating/healing to reduce workload on your IT department.
Network security is one of the largest headlines in today’s news. There are many approaches to building a secure network. Pelican applies two key architecture security features to help mitigate this concern:
Isolation is one of the most secure approaches to network security. An example is, if someone wants to break into a car, and they are unable to find your car, can you be robbed? This is the same idea behind Pelican’s isolation architecture. Our devices are the only devices able to communicate on our wireless network. This keep them separate from all other networks working to stay isolated from your confidential business infrastructure. If Pelican is unable to be found, can it be compromised?
Our second level of security is to encrypt the communication between your Pelican devices and your Pelican Web-App. Our encryption practice is a combination of private and public keys, which rotate, and remain fully separate between customer sites. Each device has a 128-bit AES encryption method, so devices know data received is truly meant for them and from a reliable source. This is similar to taking a secret message and transforming it into a completely unreadable form which only one person, who hold a secret key, can read. These keys are unique between customers, keeping with our isolation architecture from above.
Many companies use WiFi as the wireless network to bridge their climate management system to the Ethernet or App. WiFi, in general, is an extremely secure wireless platform, which is why your business uses it. But, the more devices connected to your WiFi network, the wider the risk since each point becomes a point of vulnerability. Pelican is not against WiFi, but we believe that not using WiFi enforces an isolation architecture and eliminates burden on your IT department. Each WiFi device needs to be configured to talk with your WiFi network(s), many IT departments need to create unique separation SSIDs to keep these devices from seeing others, and you need to make sure your WiFi network is built to handle the extra load now put on it. These are all items which can be taken care of and some done extremely well (using separate SSIDs does not isolate devices on your network, just makes some devices invisible to others). But, the question is, if you use WiFi, what is the cost, what is the burden, and why do you want the headache just for climate management?
Because Pelican devices are designed to communicate on the Pelican Wireless Network, each device becomes plug-and-play Internet connected. This allows for a large reduction in installation costs and eliminates the learning curve to a successful implementation. There are two principals to our system which allows us to do this:
Our wireless is unique, we built it from the ground up for our market and specifically the needs of a commercial climate management solution. By focusing on enterprise level network security, self-creating infrastructures, and self-healing algorithms – we have introduced climate management to customers who never thought they would be in control of their occupant’s comfort. Our wireless is our backbone, keeping things organized, active, and functioning. With a solid backbone you can create a solid solution and keep that solution at the forefront of the climate management industry.
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