Jun 08, 2015

When it comes to sending goods around the world, boats and shipping still reign supreme. Close to 90 percents of all goods in the world reach their final destination in part thanks to a boat trip, Slate reported, and that number will not likely change anytime soon. As an efficient and cost-effective way to ship, cargo vessels are often see as superior to airplanes or trains for longer journeys.

Part of the reason boat shipping remains a key cornerstone of the global economy today, however, has been the industry’s uptake of new technologies. Instead of using lighthouses for navigation, just about all oceangoing vessels today come equipped with global positioning systems. Replacing the manual ledgers that used to track cargo and its movement are cloud-based spreadsheets and bar core and RFID scanners. Underpinning all this is a robust wireless network, serving as the foundation for a connected global shipping network.

Current state of global shipping
Ports in the Americas handle approximately 2 million tons of cargo annually, according to the American Association of Port Authorities. This is only the tip of the iceberg as far as global shipping is concerned – only eight of the World Shipping Council’stop 50 container ports are in the Western Hemisphere. Combined, the top five busiest ports on Earth in 2013 – Shanghai; Singapore; Hong Kong; Shenzen, China and Busan, South Korea – handled around 130 million TEUs. That would mean that those five ports alone dealt with around 65 million forty-foot containers in just 2013. Considering that shipping looks to grow even further going forward, the amount of cargo that the world’s busiest ports must now deal with is higher than ever and growing at a steady clip.

To help ports deal with the influx of containers and all the logistics necessary to get goods from ships to their final destination, port authorities and shipping firms have been increasingly relying on IP-enabled technology to replace error-prone manual workflows. In particular, Slate noted that GPS systems have proven especially beneficial in hectic port environments, helping to ensure everyone knows where others -and themselves – are at any given moment. Additionally, data from a bar code scanner or an RFID tag can automatically populate a cloud database, providing greater visibility into the location of shipments.

This technology has revolutionized global shipping, providing the multitude of players involved in getting a product from point A to point B with real-time, accurate data on shipments. Now, eliminating bottlenecks becomes a cinch and getting goods to market in days, not weeks is a reality.

The network’s role in ensuring port efficiency
While all of this technology may be dramatically changing global shipping for the better, these tools are only as good as the network underpinning them. Having reliable connectivity in port environments, however, is often difficult to realize. For one, many ports are physically massive. The Port of Los Angeles, for example, covers 7,500 acres and 43 miles of shoreline. Trying to provide quality connectivity over such a large area is no easy feat, and often efforts to do so inadvertently create dead spots in coverage. Further complicating matters is the fact that severe weather on land or sea can cause major disruptions, and the presence of a lot of metal and concrete can block signals.

To overcome these issues and ensure that the technology underpinning modern port logistics today has an adequate network behind it, port authorities can implement a wireless mesh network solution. This is what officials governing the Port of Colombo in Sri Lanka did in 2013 to overcome their connectivity issues. South Asia Gateway Terminals (SAGT), the organization that oversees the largest port by volume in South Asia and the 33rd busiest port in the world, found previously that the high humidity and other environmental variables present at the Port of Colombo prevented them from using legacy connectivity technology. In addition, container stacks, cranes and other metal equipment would impede signals. And to top it all off, there are few ideal locations at the port on which to place nodes

By turning to Firetide and wireless mesh networking, however, the SAGT was able to provide connectivity to the port despite the numerous obstacles. In particular, the mesh model ensures that data always has a path to travel from point A to point B despite signal impediments, as packets are not confined to just one or a small number of routes. This is key for network continuity too, as temporary downtime for one node or signal length does not shut down the entire network. With a Firetide-based network in place, the SAGT gets 99.99 percent reliability from its solution and the ability to seamlessly support VoIP calls and other mission-critical workflows.

“Firetide’s solutions maintain a high level of performance even in an environment characterized by regular power outages and fast-changing weather conditions. And because we can easily add new nodes to the network, we are poised to manage the next phase in the port’s evolution,” said Upul Jinadasa, general manager of operations and IT at SAGT.

As shipping becomes more IP-centric to more effectively handle rising demand globally, ports need to keep up by ensuring they have a robust network in place to support everything. By opting for a wireless mesh network, ports get a dependable and reliable solution capable of overcoming a variety of challenging obstacles to ensure smooth operations no matter what. To learn more about wireless mesh networking and Firetide, be sure to contact a representative today.