This week the Green Aspect team had the opportunity to attend advanced industrial network training at Westermo in Sydney.

As the technology surrounding critical rail communications networking advances, we have seen many new forms of technology entering the market and becoming seated as the current standard.

Within the ARTC network we have seen this advancement with the implementation of Westermo’ s Lynx and Wolverine series industrial Network switches, with namely L210-F2G and L208-F2G-S2 network switches utilised for a significant portion of new signalling installations.

Though with advancement in standardisation comes new challenges such as exposure, confidence and competence working with these new products outside of the working network.

With this in mind, the Green Aspect team booked in for the 3 day advanced network switch configuration course run direct from Westermo at their Sydney Office.

The Green Aspect team is made up of many levels of competence within the realm of signal engineering, from graduates to signal electricians to signal engineers, all with varying levels of network configuration experience.

What was great about the course structure and delivery was that even though we were delving into the depths of engineering level network configurations, across multiple switch types and data mediums, the course supported all levels of competence with hands on training from highly skilled communications engineers from the Westermo team.

This course was far from a death by PowerPoint with many in-depth discussions and learning, with a chance for the Green Aspect team to pick the brain of the best in the business.

The course is a very hands on experience with test rigs made up of 4 of Westermo’s various network switches operating over differing data mediums.

As we progressed through the days we were guided through component and system introduction, multiple system login capabilities and familiarisation with Westermo’ s WeConfig Software, which is one of the most intuitive and powerful network configuration tools I have used to date.

Over the three days the team progressed through LACP, RSTP, FRNT, Virtual LANS, Alarms and system logging, Serial over IP and DHCP network protocol configurations.

It was great to meet the team at Westermo and gain the networking skills and network with those involved with these systems. This will ensure Green Aspect have a solid face value with those that can offer so much assistance, if and when we need it in the future.