The Router Isn’t the Hard Part: Why Industrial 5G Still Trips on Legacy Gear and Silent Failovers
By: James Vance – SeaPRwire – Most industrial connectivity projects start with the wrong question. Teams ask how fast the 5G radio is. They count Ethernet ports. They ignore the serial devices still running the plant and the cellular links that drop without warning. That mismatch is the real friction. InHand Networks put the IR624 forward as a working example of how to close those gaps. The router is not presented as a universal fix. It is a concrete reference for five practical layers that decide whether field gear actually stays online and usable. Start with the interfaces the plant already owns. Sites mix PLCs, meters, controllers and sensors from different decades. Some speak Ethernet. Others still run RS-232, RS-485 or Modbus RTU. Swapping every box just to reach the cloud adds cost and risk. The IR624 keeps those assets in place. It carries four Gigabit Ethernet ports, one RS-232 port and one RS-485 port. It supports TCP and UDP transparent transmission plus a Mo...