David Rush reflects on how connectivity evolved from a vehicle afterthought to mission-critical infrastructure
For years, the conversation around vehicle connectivity has been based on speed, with each generation of cellular promising more bandwidth. Today, as vehicles stream camera feeds, log telematics, take fare payments, and even provide Wi-Fi for passengers, the connectivity question is no longer about speed but about how much a single device can be trusted to manage.
David Rush, Senior Product Manager at Digi International, has seen vehicle connectivity evolve from an afterthought to a critical element over the last ten years. We sit down to discuss his career, the industry, and where connectivity is heading – as well as how being the holder of more active Guinness World Records than anyone alive translates into his professional life.
Let’s start with an introduction to you and your career.
I’ve spent over a dozen years owning cellular router product lines across transportation, enterprise, and industrial IoT, and I’ve been fortunate to be first to market at nearly every major cellular transition from LTE to gigabit LTE to 5G. I’d formerly worked with Tony Puopolo, now our GM, and Landon Reese, our VP of Product Management, and I have tremendous respect for them both. So, when they asked if I’d be willing to join the rocket ship at Digi, I jumped at the chance. Today, I lead the transportation router portfolio, including the new TX65 5G platform, and outside of work, I hold more active Guinness World Records titles than anyone on Earth, which keeps my appetite for pushing limits well-fed.
How are vehicles evolving in terms of connected technologies?
Modern vehicles now run video systems, telematics, passenger Wi-Fi, fare collection, and diagnostics simultaneously, each continuously generating and consuming data. That turns the vehicle into a distributed compute and networking node rather than just a thing that moves people or freight. The router at the center must handle high-bandwidth 5G, local edge processing, multi-port switching, and GNSS all at once. In practice, the vehicle becomes an edge site that travels at highway speed: like a data hub on wheels.
How are fleets consolidating connectivity, computing, and management tools?
It’s worth remembering where this started. When I first entered the cellular industry, vehicle connectivity was USB sticks plugged into plastic consumer routers in the trunks of police vehicles in Arizona, or three USB sticks jammed into a box on a Silicon Valley bus to give commuting engineers enough bandwidth to work on their way into the tech campuses.
Today, enterprise-grade reliability is table stakes, and fleets are moving away from that fragmented stack of separate routers, switches, serial adapters, and GNSS modules toward a single consolidated platform. The benefits are fewer points of failure, faster installs, simpler spare parts management, and meaningfully lower total cost of ownership, while tools like Digi Remote Manager let operators provision, monitor, and update thousands of vehicles from a single interface. Consolidation turns fleet connectivity from a maintenance burden into a scalable, centrally governed system.
How does the shift to consolidated vehicle platforms compare to the industry’s earlier transitions?
Enterprise-grade reliability, remote management for a fleet of distributed vehicles, and enterprise-grade security, certifications, and monitoring are now assumed. We’re well past the days of a consumer Wi-Fi puck being deployed into an enterprise-grade rollout. The LTE-to-5G transitions were fundamentally about speed and spectrum, with each generation delivering more bandwidth and lower latency. The shift to consolidated vehicle platforms is different, because it’s an architectural change rather than a raw performance jump: instead of asking how fast the pipe is, fleets are asking how many functions they can collapse into one rugged, remotely managed box.
Having developed the TX65, which consolidates 5G, Wi-Fi 7, GNSS, edge computing, and remote management into a single device, are there any challenges or trade-offs that come with aligning these functions?
With top-notch engineering and continued advancements in processing, modem, and RF technology, we can do a great deal to build the very best product on the market. The biggest trade-off we make now is between size and the physical interfaces on the outside of the box, like the SMA connectors for Wi-Fi and cellular. To keep the TX65 as small as we did, the SMAs must come out of both sides, because it’s physically impossible to keep the enclosure compact and still fit every interface on a single face. So, the discipline isn’t about whether silicon can do the job; it’s about the mechanical reality of packaging that many antennas and ports into a rugged, vehicle-grade box in as small a footprint as possible.
What applications do you expect to migrate onboard over the next few years?
Today, fleets mostly run telemetry filtering, video preprocessing, and basic operational analytics, using containerized apps to cut what gets sent to the cloud. Going forward, expect more AI edge processing added to these boxes for faster, more cost-effective data handling without consuming bandwidth, such as object detection on video streams locally rather than shipping everything upstream. As models get more efficient, more real-time decision-making moves onboard, so the vehicle can act on data instead of waiting for a round trip to the cloud. That’s what turns the router from a pipe into a platform.
How are remote management tools changing how organizations run fleets?
Remote management has shifted fleets from reactive, in-person troubleshooting to proactive, centralized operations. With a platform like Digi Remote Manager, for instance, operators can provision devices before they ship, push firmware and configuration fleet-wide, monitor modem health, and diagnose issues without a truck roll. That’s the difference between managing a handful of vehicles and confidently scaling to thousands. AI-assisted layers on top are starting to turn raw device data into actionable recommendations, which is the direction the whole category is heading.
On the flipside, more connected systems create a larger attack surface on vehicles. Where do you see the biggest security gaps in fleet networking?
The biggest gaps I see are legacy devices with weak or default credentials, unmanaged firmware across mixed hardware, and flat in-vehicle networks where one compromised system can reach everything. Consolidation genuinely helps here: a single managed platform with secure boot, a secure element, and centralized firmware updates shrinks the attack surface. It closes the patching gaps that plague multi-vendor stacks. The caveat is that concentrating functions raises the stakes of any single device, so hardening and lifecycle discipline becomes non-negotiable. Standards like FIPS 140-3 validation and SBOM/VEX support matter precisely because they make that single platform auditable.
With connectivity generations quickly turning over, how should operators think about future-proofing? What is your advice on timing that decision?
The tension is real: vehicles last ten-to-15 years while connectivity generations turn over every few years. My advice is to decouple the connectivity layer from the vehicle wherever possible, treating the router as a serviceable, upgradeable module rather than a fixed fixture. Buy platforms with headroom, meaning current-generation 5G, software-upgradeable features, and strong remote lifecycle management, so you extend useful life without a rip-and-replace. On timing, don’t chase the bleeding edge, but do avoid buying at the tail end of a generation, because that shortens your runway before the next forced refresh.
Looking ahead, which technologies do you think will reshape fleet connectivity?
The soonest real impact comes from edge AI and mature 5G features like network slicing and expanded private cellular, because they solve concrete fleet problems today. I’d also put practical, AI-assisted network management high on the list, since it directly reduces operational load. On the hype side, I’d be cautious about near-term expectations for full V2X ubiquity and satellite-cellular convergence; both are promising but the ecosystem, standards, and economics aren’t there yet for broad fleet deployment. The pattern holds: technologies that reduce operational costs and complexity are adopted quickly, and those requiring everyone else to move first take longer.
What is one thing you wish people would ask you – and why?
I wish more people would ask how record-breaking connects to product management, because they’re the same discipline. Both are about setting an audacious target, breaking it into small achievable steps, and executing under real constraints and deadlines. Whether it’s coordinating dozens of deliverables to hit a launch date or training for a specific record, the mindset of relentless, structured persistence is identical. That grit is what actually ships products and connects fleets, not just the technology itself.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
The through-line for transportation right now is that connectivity has moved from a nice-to-have to mission-critical infrastructure, and the winners will be the fleets that treat it that way. My advice is to invest in scalable platforms and management tools, and to plan for change rather than react to it. Technology will keep evolving rapidly, so the real advantage lies in building architecture and an operating model that can absorb what’s next.