Networking

Gartner, a global research and advisory firm defines big data as high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision-making, and process automation.

As lighting becomes more connected, facility managers, agents, architects and designers need to learn networking basics and terminology. While designing and installing a network sounds daunting, it is easier once you understand the basics. In this post, we talk about networking basics for smart lighting.

There has been a lot of talk about cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models these days but both are relatively new to the lighting industry. Let’s take a look at what they are as well as their roles in commercial lighting.

Selecting a smart lighting system can be daunting partly because you need to have a basic understanding of networking. How will the luminaires, sensors and controls connect and reliably communicate with each other on your smart lighting network? 

Some people believe that wireless cannot go the distance for large commercial lighting applications. That is not true. Even with the widespread usage of wireless networks, it is still amazing that there are so many myths about them.  That is not a surprise since not everybody has strong IT knowledge. After all, IT can be quite complicated. 

Wireless systems have successfully been deployed for large commercial smart lighting projects. They have proven to work just as well as hard-wired systems. 

Let’s take a closer look.