Investigating the network traffic of Industry 4.0 applications – methodology and initial results

Industrial networks - both wired and wireless - have been used by manufacturing plants and factories for many years. These networks are not always considered as primary elements of industrial architecture, although they should be. With the advent of Industry 4.0, there are already many innovation initiatives, industry recommendations, and standards in the topic of industrial network infrastructure - but integration guidelines on Industry 4.0 and the networking architectures are incomplete. In the absence of a better methodology, the networks are usually over-designed, but still rigid and are not ready to cover future needs.This paper aims to provide methods on determining some key parameters of existing industrial traffic. Building upon the state-of-the-art, the paper presents a method for testing and analyzing an existing data transfer network traversing industrial traffic. Furthermore, we provide insights on how it is worth to examine industrial networks, and find out whether a given transmission technology can meet the demands - based on the analysis of existing industrial traffic.