First we’ll define some terms.

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Local Area Network (LAN)

A sub network aka subnet, this is a set of devices connected locally to a router wired and wirelessly.

A LAN has the following properties

  • a prefix that all IP addresses in the LAN share e.g. 172.162.184.<host-id>
  • each device has a local IP address based on the subnet prefix
  • a router that defines network parameters and communication between devices and external networks

We create a LAN using the coordinator at each car wash. The devices on this network include

  • coordinator (there is a router service inside it)
  • wired peripherals (RFID reader, rTC, LPR cameras)
  • wireless peripherals (pay terminals)

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Wide Area Network (WAN)

This is how multiple LANs can be connected. Think of it as a LAN for LANs.

Since the rTC has it’s own LAN this is how we bridge the two.

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rTC <> FlexWash WAN

We use a WAN when connecting our network to the rTC network. We plug a CAT6 cable from our switch to the WAN port on the rTC router.

After connecting our LAN to the WAN port we need setup the WAN parameters in the rTC router.

You’ll need to login in the rTC router (IP address in printed on the router usually 192.168.1.91) and the username/password is usually admin/admin or admin/password.

This is what sample WAN parameters look like at a functioning site. 172.162.184.60 is the IP address we assign for the Wireless MAC address in our subnet. You should be able to ping this static IP address from our network.

We also use port forwarding so traffic from our network to a particular port is sent from our coordinator to a particular device (the XML API server) in the rTC LAN. Note in the example below the service name is Washify because this site was previously on Washify, this name is just a label it can be ignored.

Also important to have HTTP Server traffic forwarding on port 80, this allows us to access the Kesseltronics web interface from our network.

You can use the rTC router’s network tools to verify traffic from the rTC LAN can reach our LAN