The Simple Production Network Support Tool For More Secure, Higher Performance and More Efficient Production Control Networks
Learn How It Makes Heroes Out of Ordinary Maintenance Techs!
IntraVUE™ is a local visualization and monitoring application for production control networks. By continuously monitoring network activity, non-Ethernet experts can identify foreign devices on your network and discover and resolve network issues, including performance robbing inconsistencies between your switches and end devices.
IntraVUE empowers maintenance techs and controls engineers to shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to significantly improve the asset management, uptime and performance of critical, real-time production networks. With its straightforward installation process and minimal training requirements, IntraVUE automatically detects all Ethernet-connected devices and assembles them into a connection tree map of the physical layer network infrastructure, all without impacting network performance.
By continuously scanning the network for new devices, IntraVUE provides you with a comprehensive list of every asset connected to your network, even those connected momentarily. The moment a foreign device joins your network, you are immediately alerted, marking the first step towards bolstering your network’s cybersecurity.
By recording and saving every event (bandwidth overload, device replacement, lost connection, baud rate negotiation, IP Address reassignments, Mac ID changes and more) into a database, you can understand and react to network activity that happened 10 minutes ago, last night, last month or last year.
By viewing the simple topography map of your network, your non-Ethernet expert, first responders can quickly identify and solve issues that now take hours.
IntraVUE Network Map
This IntraVUE topography map identifies switches as rectangles and circles as end devices. Verified production devices are blue, while new devices have a yellow interior. Links between switches or between switches and devices are Red (disconnection), Tan (bandwidth issues) or Green (good connection).
IntraVUE Device Detail
You get complete device details by clicking a device or switch on the topography map. You can view the device’s identity information, a graph of its current ping response time and ping failures and the event log for that device. The identity information includes IP and MAC addresses, EtherNet/IP or PROFINET identity information and any user-defined identity. The ping response graphs indicate how fast this device responds to IntraVUE’s pings and the number and timing of ping failures. Excessive ping time might indicate a bandwidth issue, failing Ethernet cables or a busy device.
Is Your Production Network Healthy, Sick Or Don’t You Know?
An operating production control network is not necessarily healthy just because you’re a making product!
In fact, YOUR NETWORK MAY BE VERY SICK. It may have one or more network segments overloaded with traffic. It could have a cable and one or more connectors starting to fail. It could have autonegotiation failures, misconfigured baud rates and duplex mismatches.
Would your maintenance team know if your production control network is sick? Most wouldn’t.
A sick network doesn’t just underperform; it’s a ticking time bomb. Subtle failures gradually erode performance. Eventually, it leads to a catastrophic ‘heart attack’ when one of those failing components fails completely. The result? Costly downtime and disrupted operations.
How To Know If Your Network Is On The Verge Of A Heart Attack
IntraVUE builds a set of KPIs: one for your network, one for the switches you designate as critical and one for the devices you designate as critical. At a glance, your maintenance team will know if your network is sick and how close it is to that heart attack.
IntraVUE Network Health Screen
Ten Reasons Why You’ll Only Be Able To Take IntraVUE Away From Your Maintenance Team By Prying It From Their Cold Dead Fingers
- They’re solving headaches before they become migraines. They’ll use the health monitor to identify what needs attention.
- They won’t be waiting for an “Ethernet network expert” to appear and solve network issues. IntraVUE is simple enough for them to solve Ethernet problems on their own.
- No more guessing. They’ll know right away if a failure was generated by a mechanical failure (IntraVUE topology map all green) or a network component (a component in red).
- They can quickly check machine status remotely using any browser.
- They have access to an “intelligent” application that digests the IntraVUE database and details the network issues they need to be work on.
- It’s local. It’s not running in the Cloud. No artificial intelligence. It’s just a simple application that has one job and does it well.
- They can refer to devices by the names they use in the plant and not by IP address.
- They have their very own time machine! They can go back in time and see what happened 15 minutes, six hours or three days ago. The event log catalogs every disconnection, baud rate change, IP address change, change of port and so much more.
- IntraVUE cures “amnesia”. No more “I didn’t touch anything.” The event log has the final say about what happened in the middle of the night.
- It only takes 15 minutes of training to understand how to use it and no Ethernet knowledge is required.
What You’ll Love About IntraVUE
AUTOMATIC ASSET REPORTS
Always know every switch and device on your network, what is connected to every port and get an accurate, up-to-date asset list whenever you want.
QUICKLY IDENTIFY NEW DEVICES
Know immediately when a new device is connected to your OT network. Know its IP address, MacID, switch port number and network identity (EtherNet/IP and PROFINET).
VIEW CRITICAL SWITCH and DEVICE KPIs
Get daily and 30 day KPIs on your overall network and your process critical switches and devices. Plan ahead when a critical switch or device is failing.
DETAILED ACTIVITY EVENT LOG
All network activity is captured in a very detailed event log. Use the log to identify new devices and device(s) with connection issues, renegotiation failures, dropped ping responses before it affects your production process.
NETWORK COMMISSIONING ASSISTANCE
Validate system network architecture, IP addresses, switch port connections and more during OT network commissioning.
TRACKING OF ETHERNET/IP and PROFINET
Understand exactly what EtherNet/IP and PROFINET devices you have, where they are located and their software revisions. Easily verify that identical devices use identical software revisions.
COLOR-CODED LIVE ACTIVITY MAP
Watch color-coded network activity in real time to discover high-traffic segments, overloaded devices and bottlenecks in your manufacturing process.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does IntraVue work?
IntraVUE uses a combination of PING and SNMP to scan a control network. It pings all addresses within a series of user-defined ranges to identify and measure the responses of those devices.
Does IntraVUE RT track ghost nodes?
Ghost nodes are devices that have moved from one place in the network to another place in the network. IntraVUE tracks Ghost nodes until the IntraVUE administrator approves the relocation of the device.
Where do I locate IntraVUE on my network?
IntraVUE can be located at any convenient point on your Ethernet production network. It should be located at a position where it can access all the switches and devices you want it to monitor.
What kind of activity does IntraVUE record in its database?
IntraVUE records all network activity it its database including switch and device data (MacIDs, IP addresses, etc.), restarts, bandwidth, address changes, location changes and more.
How often does IntraVUE scan a network?
By default IntraVUE scans each user-defined control network range every 30 seconds and can be adjusted by the user.
What IntraVUE support is available?
Support for the operation of the IntraVUE software is available free of charge. Expert analysis of network problems is available on a contract basis.
What software platforms are available for IntraVUE?
IntraVUE is deployed as Windows or Linux applications.
Does IntraVUE consume Ethernet control network bandwidth?
IntraVUE consumes little bandwidth. Unlike IT network analysis tools, IntraVUE relies mostly on ping commands to gather network data (SMTP is also used). IT network tools rely solely on SMTP which uses much larger data packets, consuming more bandwidth. Because IntraVUE uses more ping commands, it can gather network data at a faster rate than IT network tools.
How much training is required?
IntraVUE is designed for technicians who are not network experts to understand what kinds of problems are occurring in their network and what might be causing those problems. Little training is required to configure and operate IntraVUE.
What changes do I need to make to my Ethernet control network?
In most cases, no changes to any device, switch or router are required. In some network architectures, routers must be configured to allow IntraVUE to ping from one network to another and switches are sometimes not configured to respond to certain SMTP requests.
Does IntraVUE recognize EtherNet/IP and PROFINET devices?
Yes, IntraVUE identifies EtherNet/IP and PROFINET devices and reads their identify information using protocol specific commands.
How does IntraVUE compare to IT network diagnostic tools?
IntraVUE is designed for the kinds of architectures that are found in production networks. For example, it supports repeated address segments and control network VLANs (VLANs are used differently in control networks). Where IT network tools typically focus on the operation of switches and routers, IntraVUE focuses on devices.
How does IntraVUE detect high usage network segments?
IntraVUE monitors the byte count and bandwidth for each switch port and classified the port usage.
Does IntraVUE recognize devices other than EtherNet/IP and PROFINET?
IntraVUE can only get detailed identify information from EtherNet/IP and PROFINET devices. Most other network devices don’t have a mechanism that delivers device identity data.
What is the IntraVUE Agent?
The IntraVUE Agent is a tool that collects network data on remote, isolated networks and feeds that data to an IntraVUE scanner. With Agents, the IntraVUE scanner provides a more comprehensive overview of a network that is composed of several isolated networks.
What is the report generator?
The IntraVUE Report Generator is a tool that analyzes a IntraVUE database and provides analysis of the network similar to what a network expert might provide.
What kind of detailed info can I add to IntraVUE?
IntraVUE allows the user to provide a wealth of additional detail to a network nodes including both asset identification data and web links to pertinent resources..
What is an IntraVUE Supervisor?
An IntraVUE Supervisor is a tool for collecting network data from a number of IntraVUE Scanners. It provides a way for several IntraVUE systems to be monitored from one place.
What Customers Are Saying
Over 5,000 installations of IntraVUE are running today in some of the biggest manufacturers with some of the most critical production processes.
We just dodged a bullet!!! IntraVUE sent out email alerts that we were having ping failures on a machine and we didn’t see any issues but when we looked into the NIC… it failed… but we were ready and swapped it out losing no downtime!!!
We had a recently had a Rockwell Device 1756-ENBT drop its IP address and nobody had an idea why…. I went to IntraVUE and it had logged the device dropping its IP. The reason, a duplicate IP being put on the network. It also logged the device with the duplicate IP, its name which turned out to be a laptop.
This tool allowed us to quickly get the device back up and operational knowing it was not a random failure. It saved us from replacing the part and be in the dark about what happened. IntraVUE has done a lot to simplify the monitoring of our network and this was one that just blew us away.
It would be impossible to keep track of our network’s development and its real-time performance without IntraVUE,” “…We also know that IntraVUE’ s inherent security allows us to immediately detect new connections and disable them if they’re not authorized.
As soon as we activated it all those years ago we realized that we had a problem on one of our servers which we were able to rectify in a controlled manner. It virtually paid for itself immediately by avoiding a long costly shutdown.
IntraVUE just saved the mill several hours of downtime on our hotline last week and helped us discover the root cause of three recent network switch failures in the same location. This is the most critical operation in the plant so recovering quickly from a system failure is critical.
Late last Monday night our truck/rail car load out tower started having intermittent loss of plant communications. I was able to use IntraVUE to determine where communications were being lost in the network, which was happening between the bulk tower switch and the switch upstream in the maintenance shop. Being able to see the link drop as I was also seeing pings to the switch being lost, was really helpful as well. It was an easy verification of where the problem is occurring. I used the threshold graph to narrow down when the switch started losing communications, how long the drops were lasting. I am definitely glad to have this tool.
Risk Free Guaranty
IntraVUE saves expensive downtime! The first time a cable or connector fails, you have a duplicate IP address, there is a problem in the middle of the night or any other of the countless possible issues with your machine, you will have the tool you need to diagnose and solve the problem quickly. There is no doubt about it. You’ll save at least a half hour of downtime and pay for the product on your very first network issue.
Because IntraVUE pays for itself on the first network failure, you can take advantage of this
Amazing, No Questions Asked, Unheard of Guarantee!
In the first 30 days, if you don’t save a minimum of a half hour of downtime
(that’s at least $12,000 and as much as $500,000)
You can return it for a full refund!
Yes, we’ll refund 100% of the purchase price!
Yes, that’s right. No questions asked. If IntraVUE doesn’t pay for itself in the first 30 days, you can return it within 30 days of purchase for a full refund of the purchase price.
The product pays for itself in the first 25 minutes of downtime you save in a consumer goods plant, the first three minutes of downtime you save in a heavy industry plant or the first two seconds of downtime in an auto plant.
YOU CAN’T AFFORD NOT TO HAVE THIS TOOL IN YOUR TOOLBOX!
What to Do Next
Contact a member of our Enginerd® team to talk through your particular application needs, place an order or schedule a webinar. Call 800-249-1612 or complete the form below.