I learned that Trilliant does in fact have an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) based means of network management. This still does not address how the data captured from an increasing number of field devices (far more than found in corporate networks that use SNMP) can be effectively utilized to manage the network. Hoefully Trilliant and other vendors will begin to publicize their approach to this problem in the future.

One commenter noted that I seemed to effectively penalize Trilliant for supporting industry standards - this was related to my comments on their 2.4 MHz 802.15.4 standards based solution. Good point - I like standards! The 802.15.4 standard uses an encoding technique called DSSS to mitigate the impacts of multipath fading, which tends to dominate any real-world range comparison. Narrowband solutions are much more sensitive to multipath fading than DSSS solutions and that limits the real-world range. Almost all standards-based modern communications systems (WiFi, WiMAX, etc.) use DSSS. Many older proprietary systems use narrowband because they’re easier to design with discrete components on a board, even though they may have much worse performance. The debate between DSSS versus FHSS technology can become a "religious" issue but adhering to a standard is a laudable goal because it facilitates in depth analysis and comparison to like systems.

Finally, Trilliant - and many other vendors - need to do a better job in their marketing collateral to describe their security and enterprise integration architectures. We can no longer evaluate these solutions on the capabilities of the individual widget capabilities themselves - "It's the system stupid"

Erich