The Future Of Networking?

The Future Of Networking?

- Tim Queeney

Wireless networks and access to the Internet on board has increased dramatically in the past few years. Now it is becoming rare that a voyaging vessel doesn’t have a local wired or wireless (or both) network on board. One potentially important development is that the types of devices that can be connected will increase via a new open source networking system called Signal K. Another coming change is the prospect of increased areas of coverage for high-speed Internet, possibly including the entire globe if announced satellite Internet plans come to fruition.

In the early days of onboard networking, the types of devices that could be connected to a boat network were limited to a few: performance instruments, positioning receivers (like loran and GPS), autopilots, etc. And those units were usually connected via proprietary networks offered by marine electronics companies. A few years ago, a group of volunteer developers got together and worked out a networking language called Signal K that allows just about any device in the “Internet of things” to participate on a boat network.

Signal K is a free and open source universal marine data exchange format that makes use of the HTML 5 standard. Signal K, according the Signal K Association’s website, “provides a method for sharing information independent of the underlying communications protocol (e.g., NMEA 0183, NMEA 2000, SeaTalk, I2C, 1-Wire, ZigBee, etc.) in a way that is friendly to Wi-Fi, cellphones, tablets and the Internet. Signal K is the next-generation solution for marine data exchange. It not only allows for communication between instruments and sensors on board a single vessel, but also for sharing of data between multiple boats, aids to navigation, bridges and marinas.”