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Silver Spring Networks unveiled its IoT Edge Router, expanding the capabilities of its Internet of things networking platform.
The IoT Edge Router enables cities and utilities to integrate an array of devices and applications to their existing Silver Spring IoT networks.
With the standards-based IoT Edge Router, network operators can plug and play new and legacy smart city devices into these already deployed networks, such as smart street lights and smart grid systems.
The compute and mesh-based communications in the Linux-based IoT Edge Router allows devices to communicate with and control each other at the edge of the network, and provides a platform to test and develop next-generation smart city applications such as data analytics, real-time sensors, dynamic lighting and traffic flow monitoring.
This array of IoT sensors, devices, and data can be controlled, commanded, and monitored by Silver Spring’s management software, including the SLV6 City Management Platform, which provides cities, utilities, and energy services companies with a solution to manage smart city devices.
“There are many cities today that are interested in the efficiencies and new revenue opportunities enabled by smart city technology, but are hesitant on where to begin, Silver Spring’s vice president of smart cities,” Brandon Davito, told eWEEK. “In order for cities to have a vision of a smart city, the first thing they need to do is connect all their smart city assets. The current approaches to connect these city systems are highly fragmented. Many others in the industry offer single-purpose applications that do not deliver clear, long-term benefits and value to a city.”
Davito explained by leveraging an edge device like the IoT Edge Router, which gives third parties the application space on which to build new innovations, cities will be able to more easily connect devices through multiple transports, communications, and protocols; process and manage city-wide data, and strengthen a city’s future with significant performance to support edge computation.
In Bristol, England, the Bristol is Open program is using Silver Spring technology at an innovation lab, where startups and academia can access sensor data to create new smart city apps. The aim is to drive economic development to improve the quality of life for citizens. The city of Paris has implemented Silver Spring’s IPv6 platform citywide through intelligent traffic controls and street lights with the goal of reducing public lighting consumption by 30 percent over the next decade.
Copenhagen, often regarded as the world’s most sustainable city, is deploying Silver Spring’s canopy network citywide through intelligent street lights and traffic controls to create a safer cycling network for the more than 50 percent of the city’s population that commutes to work.