How much time have you spent configuring DCOM for remote OPC over the years?

What if there were another way?

In today’s process control environment, OPC is the protocol of choice for the following reasons:

• Wide variety of driver options
• Vendor-agnostic connectivity to various types of PLC, DCS and other systems or equipment
• Easy access to real-time data from virtually any piece of equipment

But networking OPC is challenging. The networking protocol for OPC is DCOM, which was not designed for industrial real-time data transfer.  Tunnelling is the answer to overcoming the limitations of DCOM.

The problem with DCOM is that it:

• Is difficult to configure
• Responds poorly to network breaks
• Has serious security flaws
• Sometimes impossible to configure (such as connecting between manufacturing and corporate LANs)

This whitepaper takes a closer look at how tunnelling solves the issues associated with DCOM, and how the Cogent DataHub provides a secure, reliable, and easy-to-use tunnelling solution with many advanced features.