Oil pipelines are an integral part of the oil industry. Overland pipelines mostly handle the transporting of crude oil. Pipelines are secured by networks which are monitored from a central control room fed by thousands of data points throughout a pipeline. Many of these pipelines travel across harsh lands requiring industrial networking equipment which plays a huge part in the pipeline process.

In oil pipeline applications, a continuous stream of data is collected and transmitted long distances via fiber optics using industrial Ethernet switches at each field station to boost and add new data streams to eventually end up at a control room. Anytime there is an issue with a data point on a pipeline, the control room’s SCADA system receives an alert, which allows an operator to call a field technician to fix the issue.

Remote field site stations running along a pipeline collect the important networking data from local Modbus and Ethernet sensors along with video feed captured by IP/PoE surveillance cameras. The data streams from the local sensors contain information regarding liquid flow, temperatures, pressure, and leak detection – all critical to the safety of the pipeline. All this data is streamed across fiber optics running the length of the pipeline acting as the application’s backbone.