SCADA Communication

The SCADA system for factories and utilities are quite different.
Factories commonly use LAN as their communication while utilities use WAN due to equipment/plants are located very remote.

In our SCADA system at BENECO we use 2 redundant WAN communication. We use Fiber Optic line w/ DLink media converter and combination of Dlink and Cisco Switches. and Engenius(802.llg) for our wireless Communication for our backup.

Based from the experience this is the comparison we observed between the two communication type.

Fiber Optic	WireLess (802.11g)
Speed is Faster( Greater than 1GBps)	Speed is Slower( Less than 64Mbs)
Installation of Fiber/Line - Physically : Underground / Overhead	No Need for Communication Wire/Line but must be Line of Sight
More Expensive (Termination/Fusion)	Less Expensive (Can be configured via internal web based application)
More Prone to damages - Cut Line/Wire (Fusion is Expensive)	Replace and Install (Just Copy the Save configuration)

Each have there advantages and disadvantages. So acquiring communication is based on your specific design.