SNMP and TL1 Alarm and Control Systems


Perspective

The world of Alarm and Control is undergoing a dramatic evolution. It is powered by the  extraordinary capabilities of IP and SNMP. New IP vocabulary is used  with Manager and Agent paralelling the more conventional expressions like Master and RTU, and traps  are now  transmitted rather than alarms. It's applications, once the exclusive domain of large telecoms is now of interest to industrials and ISP's. SNMP itself has seen a rapid evolution to better assume its new responsabilities. It is an added tool to the already considerable set of protocols and standards at your disposal to improve the reliability, manageability and cost effectiveness in monitoring  your network. This page outlines, in a historical context, the latest concepts in Masters and Remotes that provide you with the tools you need to evolve your monitoring network towards IP in a progressive and cost effective way. Let me first stress two important things that unlike specs, cannot easily be quantified, and as a result have a tendency to get ignored altogether: Quality and Standards.

  View the the Dantel site directly.



Quality Control

Product quality is the first consideration in choosing a product and manufacturer. A dynamic Quality Control program is a necessary element of a quality product design and manufacture, and the only means of maintaining product integrity during its production life. The vigilant application of programs like ISO 9001 by a manufacturer is a good indication of product quality assurance and of your network integrity as it grows over the years. The dividends of a company's past investments in quality should be clearly measurable in the repair statistics of a manufacturer's products over the past decades. This, in turn, should be reflected in a trouble free operation of your Alarm and Control network. A longer warranty period is no substitute for proper quality control.

  Learn more about ISO.



Standards

The importance of standards in defining interfaces and protocols is nowhere better illustrated than in legacy Alarm and Control equipment still in operation today. The plethora of proprietary protocols in legacy equipment product is due to a lack of existing standards at the time of manufacture. The continued presence of manufacture discontinued products on the network has led to an important need for legacy protocol mediation. Users of such equipment must face the dilemma of finding a mediation device or replacing the legacy equipment. Designing your network with standardized protocols is an insurance against obsolescence now and in the future.

  Learn more about SNMP.

  Learn more about TL1.

  Learn more about TCP/IP.



Alarm and control System.

Alarm and Control systems have traditionally consisted of a Master Station polling or interrogating  a number of distant Remote Terminal Units, RTU's, for the presence of alarms. Each RTU is wired with the major and minor alarms made available as closures from the various telecom or power equipment located at a remote site. As technology progressed and processors became more powerful, smaller and more affordable it became feasible to distribute the processing power into a hierarchy blurring somewhat the Master Remote concept. The same technology and the evolution of protocols like TCP IP pushed the capability of the personal computer such an extent that the independent Master became the PC. With its basic OS and SNMP it can conveniently handle small networks, with dedicated specialized software it can tackle large networks leaving only the largest to mainframe computers. 

  Dantel's 460ACS: A success story, Fully Modular, Unsurpassed Reliability. 

Dantel's 460ACS, still widely used across North America, made Dantel's reputation for unparrallelled reliability and unprecedented modularity in an RTU.  Its flexibility in supporting multiple protocols is legendary and can be appreciated in the following partial list: ASCII, DCM, DCMX, DCP, DCPS, DCPF, E2A, E2, SNMP, TABS, TBOS, TCP/IP, Teltrac IV and TL-1. Similarly common network interfaces compatibility is no less impressive: RS-422/485, RS-232,RS-449, RS-530, USB, X25(V.35) and 64Kb. This concern for equipment versatility has been carried through to Dantel's other products and our design teams are always eager to design products for your special interface needs.

Many types of equipment, environmental, and other Central Office alarms (discrete and serial) can be collected and processed using various protocols for transmission to Network Operating Center (NOC) using any of several widely accepted standards. Each 460 system provides modular flexibility by adding cards in a 400-type shelf. Dantel supports autonomous and polled protocols to insure that your alarm system enjoys the best efficiency and most reliable operation possible.  Key to the polling concept is that any RTU not responding is deemed in alarm thus making the alarm system fail-safe. Many techniques (such as heartbeat alarms) also exist for autonomous networks to insure their integrity as well.

Over the years Dantel/Dantek has created many thousands of unique 460ACS applications to suit our customer's requirements. Please call us so to we can design a optimal solution to suit your own needs.

SNMP Remote Terminal Units: RTU

SNMP, simple network management protocol, was designed to monitor computer networks like a local area network LAN. It was typically used to report password authentication failure at a remote server or some similar event on the network. A new terminology of trapping events rather than sending alarms evolved. The next step was to use conventional RTU's with a SNMP interface to include open doors and alarms generated by other equipment on the same premises. SNMP was very different than conventional polling and some critics stressed the fool-proof nature of alarms against the simple transmission provided by SNMP. The rapid evolution of SNMP from V1 to V2C and V3 has silenced most critics while the use Ping and Inform has made it into a reliable alternative to alarms but with one major advantage. The trap can effectively identify itself in ASCII text. This the conventional alarm could not do. The new protocols and networking bring a true evolution to monitoring with capabilities undreamed of  a few years back. The remote can be small and cost effective while providing, through your favorite browser, extensive information on demand. Or like the 460ACS it can be modular and flexible providing larger sites with full monitoring flexibility.  Wether monitored from a pc or a dedicated mainframe the SNMP remote is writing history providing  monitoring capabilities with simply unprecedented features, performance, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

  Dantel's WebMon: The concept. 

  Dantel's WebMonEdge: 8 Alarms and 2 Controls. 

The Edge is shown on the upper left. One unit operates at the plant in Fresno to demonstrate its capabilities. The Edge acts as a server and can be accessed trough its IP address(63.165.209.20). A real image on your browser is worth many words so you may just click on the next link or type the address on your browser as http://63.165.209.20. Note the log-in area on the upper right corner and the optional video image of the site on the right. The unit can act as a secure server with DES 40bit encryption, a standard on most browser for secure transactions. 

  Dantel's WebMonEdge: acts as a server(63.165.209.20). 

  Dantel's WebMonMatrix: Same performance, rack mounted, modular approach. 



TL1  Remote Terminal Units: RTU

The elegant evolution of the network requires the integration of non IP elements into the network and the even the growth of non IP segments. Here conventional protocols like TL1 are often the solution of choice as it can perform well with no more than RS232 or a 202 modem link. Here the PM Eagle shines through its versatility and simplicity of wiring in the conventional site and the not so conventional.    

  Dantel's Point Master Eagle: 64 to 256 Alarms, 4 to 32 Controls. 



Master Terminal

The traditional function of the Master Terminal is to poll all RTU's in the network and report alarms in a fail-safe fashion. Any RTU not responding is deemed in trouble as are the alarms of the equipment it handles. The MT must then associate a name and location for each of the alarm addresses reported. A data base is used to keep all alarm description. Finally it displays the information to the human operator for action. Controls proceed in much the same but inverse fashion. The software nature of the Master make it well suited for protocol mediation or conversion or interfacing to a LAN or the internet. As a critical part of the system, the hardware and it's Operating System, can provide a powerful base with many networking abilities built-in. Windows XP for example has remarkable capabilities when compared to previous generation OS, like NT, 98 or 95 and this new generation provides a very strong feature base, particularly in networking, on which to build a Master Terminal. The new technology requires that the Master in addition to storing the alarm description of conventional systems like 460ACS on simpler protocols like DCP-F, be able to interface to RTU's on more complex protocols like TL1 and SNMP which integrate much of the description for alarms as part of their structure. Similarly in large networks a need to have a Master report to a senior Master require communication, usually TL1, between masters or a dedicated mainframe like, for example, HP Openview.

  Dantel's VisionMaster: Software. 

  Dantel's VisionMaster: Specifications.