Machine Connectivity System Requirements

Owned by Vanessa Katharina Findling (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 27, 2022 by Dennis Hezel
3 min read

For cloud customers we provide everything that is needed to connect to machines that are reachable from the internet. If you would like to connect machines from a private network then see below.

For on-premise customers all machine connectivity requirements are already covered by the general on-premise pre-requisites if the machines are accessible from the server that runs our application.

Connecting private network machines

We provide a standalone application called the Aggregator which is a small application that converts data from different printer protocols to a common format.

Based on your company size and requirements to availability, you can run the Aggregator on server hardware, mini-computers or desktop computers. The Aggregator does not have a GUI.

Compatible operating systems:

  • Windows Server 2012 R2 or higher

  • Windows 7 home edition or higher

Minimum hardware requirements:

  • 512 MHz 64-bit dual core CPU

  • 256 MB RAM

  • 50 MB disk space

  • Network card

  • + requirements from the OS

  1. The Aggregator needs access to the machines via network on machine-specific ports. These ports might need to be forwarded or whitelisted in a firewall.

  2. The Aggregator pushes data via a REST API to the 3YOURMIND Agile MES on the default port 443. This connection typically does not require additional network setup.

Multiple Aggregators might need to be deployed when the printers are operating in different networks. See Multi-Facility Installation below for more details.

The Aggregator must be installed and configured by a network administrator through a config file.

Multi-Facility Installation

The Aggregator supports connecting machines from multiple facilities to one 3YOURMIND Agile MES instance. To achieve such a connection, one or both of the following network setups can be used:

One Aggregator per facility

In this case, the Aggregator is running in each facility/network individually.

Advantage:

  • No port forwarding or firewall rules are needed.

  • It might be easier for the network administrator to obtain IP addresses and ports of the printers, which are needed for proper configuration of the Aggregator.

Disadvantage:

  • Each facility needs to setup the Aggregator. Multiple administrators might need to be involved. 

One Aggregator for all facilities

 In this case, one Aggregator is deployed on a central location (e.g. within the same environment as the 3YOURMIND Agile MES instance).

Advantage:

  • One single instance of the Aggregator needs to be set up. This could be handled by one single person.

Disadvantage:

  • Each printer needs to be accessible by the Aggregator on a printer-specific port. Those ports need to be forwarded per printer. Firewall rules need to be adjusted.

  • Collecting all IP addresses and ports might be harder.

Security Considerations

  • The traffic between the Aggregator and machine depends on the machine manufacturer. Not all manufactures use secure channels, we can therefore not guarantee that the connection is always secure. Hence we recommend to deploy the Aggregator inside the machines' network.

  • The traffic between the Aggregator and the 3YOURMIND Agile MES is encrypted with TLS/SSL.