SIM Card Activation and Seamless Device Onboarding
This feature will automatically activate your Cisco-provided AT&T SIM card, as long as you have set up an account with AT&T and entered the account credentials into IoT Operations Dashboard (OD). Once you enter your AT&T account credentials into IoT OD, you can preconfigure a group of devices to share the same SIM configuration with (comm plan and rate plan).
Once you complete these prerequisites, devices that are moved into the group will automatically provision into your AT&T account as soon as the IoT network devices are switched on for the first time. SDO accomplishes the following:
• Automate device configuration for Day 1 operation (APNs, cellular config), replacing error-prone manual APN configuration.
• Automate switching of device SIM from Cisco’s holding account to customer’s enterprise Control Center Account.
SDO Architecture
Figure 7-14 is a simplified graphic of the Secure Device Onboarding process.
Figure 7-14 Secure device onboarding process
Secure Equipment Access
Use Secure Equipment Access (SEA) to remotely manage access and interact with both the gateways and connected devices. This can be used to directly troubleshoot or monitor the IoT devices in your deployment.
SEA provides browser-based access to equipment for all supported protocols: HTTP/S, SSH, RDP, and VNC. No additional software is required on the user laptop to access equipment. Specific users within in-house operations teams and external third parties can be assigned access to a group of equipment.
Here’s an example:
• An elevator technician can use SEA to establish IP connectivity between his PC and an elevator in another city. He can then use a diagnostics application on his PC to troubleshoot an issue, determine a solution, and dispatch a repair technician with the right parts for that issue.
• An administrator can use a VNC connection to remotely access and control a Windows computer attached to the gateway.
• A device (such as a camera management server) can be accessed and used to configure and manage other devices (such as video cameras).
Summary Steps
Step 1. Log in to your Operations Dashboard account.
Step 2. A system administrator sets up device access.
Step 3. Onboard and configure gateways using the Edge Device Manager service.
Step 4. Add IoT devices to the gateways in SEA.
• Connected clients configured in EDM can be selected from a list. (Note: Connected clients for IG devices are auto-discovered.)
• Additional devices can be manually added in SEA.
Step 5. An operator administrator gives users SEA access to specific equipment.
Step 6. Operator users can then access the equipment.