Today’s oil & gas industry is facing major technology changes in the field automation and control of devices. In the past nearly all SCADA and EFM devices only had a serial port to gather the data. These devices now have Ethernet ports along with serial ports, to communicate, control, program and transmit the data back to a company central data gathering/polling host. This change from mostly serial to mostly Ethernet communications has made the job of a field automation / measurement technician more complex. Setting up the Ethernet port in a meter involves knowing a number of parameters to ensure reliable communications of the data being polled. This article will cover some of the basic things a technician will have to know to connect to your company WAN (Wide Area Network).