Innovator Profile: Acklio

 

 

A network outage can be extremely costly for an organisation with an average cost of network downtime estimated at around $5,600 per minute, that’s $300,000 per hour[1]. Acklio’s innovative LPWAN solution addresses worst-case outage scenarios to quickly connect, diagnose, and resolve issues reducing costs for both MNOs and vendors. It can also be implemented on a LoRaWAN.

How can redundancy connectivity be provided when your remote equipment uses a 3G or 4G mobile network as its operating network? Or alternatively, you already have a 3G or 4G out-of-band management solution for critical equipment, but you need to mitigate residual risk. The answer is a redundancy link using low power, wide area network (LPWAN) radio technologies.

Acklio’s LPWAN Backup Connectivity Kit allows operators and vendors to setup a low cost additional ‘virtual wire’ to their network equipment. Acklio has made it possible to use the IoT’s emerging networks for this extra out-of-band management.

Utilising their innovations in carrying IP protocols over the LPWAN, Acklio has developed a Backup Connectivity solution that provides IP-based management system over networks. Delivered as a plug and play solution, it enables a safe redundancy link to equipment for business continuity at low cost.

How does it work?

Acklio’s solution allows secure shell (SSH) communications over LPWAN with routers and switches. It addresses the worst-case outage scenarios by offering an innovative redundancy solution for the network administrator to respond quickly to connect, diagnose, and fix problems remotely.

 

Figure 1: Global architecture of the LPWAN Backup Connectivity Kit

This solution is the very first industrial implementation of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Static context header compression (SCHC) compression-decompression technology. It enables interoperable use of the IP protocol suite across LPWAN. It facilitates building rich energy-efficient services while using technologies known to all developers (instead of niche LPWAN specifications).

“By integrating LPWAN and IP, Acklio’s solution provides value to customers with critical infrastructure in remote locations, while setting the stage for additional solutions that combine the power of IP networking with the unique capabilities of LPWAN tomorrow” W. Mark Townsley, Cisco Fellow, Chief Technology and Architecture Office.

This is an original use case for LPWAN, network technologies designed for highly constrained, energy-efficient devices. The innovation behind this solution is Acklio’s ability to use IP over any network and in any conditions.

Benefits

Acklio LPWAN Backup Connectivity Kit reduces costs for both an MNOs own remote equipment and the vendors’ premises. It reduces OpEx by reducing breakdown and troubleshooting associated costs and benefits CapEx with a staggered ‘pay-as-you-grow’ solution.

The LPWAN Backup Connectivity Kit enables operators a better service at a lower price. By removing all the main barriers to LPWAN adoption with seamless interoperability by integrating IP with compression and fragmentation enabling IP/TCP on any LPWAN network. Acklio’s innovations provide end-to-end security and allow for native scalability by building IoT on solid foundations that ensure stability and security of a multi-connectivity architecture.

Acklio is a young company, created three years ago in Rennes, France providing software solutions for IoT infrastructure networks. Acklio’s speciality is in delivering IoT with no trade-off between interoperability, security, or scalability.

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[1] https://blogs.gartner.com/andrew-lerner/2014/07/16/the-cost-of-downtime/

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