June 3, 2011

 

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Comments

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Ken

Regarding Joel Kent's comment. What is the brand of the $89.00 device his customer is using? Where can you get one?

Thanks.

John Mathis

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Ken,

The VoIP communication failure issues and the issue of people doing away with land lines in favor of cell phones are affecting our industry tremendously. The problems will continue to get worse, and they will not get better. We dedicate man-hours every day to help dealers solve these communications problems.

Since many end-users do not think to call their alarm company when they cancel their phone lines or when they switch to VoIP, the first indication the alarm company has that this has happened is when the end-user calls in to report a communications failure. Hopefully this did not happen because of an actual break-in. Therefore, Response Center USA recommends that all end-user alarm panels be programmed for a supervised test signal to be sent to the central station at least monthly. Weekly or daily is even better. That way, if the panel fails to communicate for any reason, the dealer is notified by us of a potential problem. The dealer has an opportunity to perform whatever service is needed to remedy the problem.

The issues have become so commonplace and severe that Response Center USA has developed a small module that can solve most of these problems. If there is no longer a phone, of if the phone service has been switched to VoIP, then all that has to be done is to unplug the RJ-31X phone cord and plug it into our RCIC module. Then plug the RCIC into an internet router in the home or business. The RCIC changes the alarm signal into true internet packets and sends them to our receiver, which handles them just as if a phone call had been made. It does not use VoIP, but rather true internet packets.

This solution may help your readers. If any would like more info, we would be glad to help them.

Gary Dawkins

CEO, Response Center USA

San Antonio, TX

866-489-4105

 

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Dear Ken,

The article of 04 May 2011 entitled "POTS and VoIP" seems to indicate that there is still much confusion about the actual characteristics of these three modes of voice / data transmission. I could write a very specific and detailed account for each type of service, but I will try and simplify. The failure of VoIP to reliably allow transmission of alarm signals has nothing to do with the service being "digital" but that VoIP protocol transmits the signals as "data packets" and not as a continuous transmission. This protocol causes the alarm data to be broken up into "packets" and therefore causes the receiver not to be able to understand the data strings. Imagine it as an Interstate highway with vehicles flowing continuously along it. Whether this being analog or digital makes no difference. However, imagine VoIP as being the same Interstate highway with a traffic signal that stops traffic for 10 seconds after every 50 vehicles pass. You then get "packets" of 50 vehicles traveling with a 10 second break in between every "packet". If your alarm transmission is 150 digits long, it then ends up in three different packets; and because of the breaks inserted it is no longer continuous to the receiver. Obviously POTS has a continuous path as do some types of digital transmission methods. Because it is generally beyond the technical expertise of the average alarm company or installer to be able to distinguish with certainty which method is being used, it seems that the choice for reliability has to remain, for now, with POTS.

Howard Sharpe

Huntington Beach CA

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Ken,

As you know I have issued several comments on this subject but based on the recent comments I have a few more.

VOIP is an acronym that stands for VOICE over Internet Protocol. Nothing in the definition of VOIP provides for transmission of Data, Dialers etc. it is designed for VOICE. Jitter, delay, short dropouts etc and common in VOIP and are only a minor inconvenience to the user if they notice them at all. These acceptable glitches on VOICE communication are not acceptable for dialer transmission. So what’s the point? We as an industry need to swallow the pill and accept the fact that the DIALER is on the way out. We do not need a way to make our dialers work on VOIP or get the carriers to “Fix” VOIP to handle dialers, we need to start phasing out dialers and moving to direct IP communication via cable, DSL, Wireless, Cellular, etc. We need to keep these legacy dialers working for a few more years until we can migrate our customers to new transmission technology but we need to look to the future not the past and begin to move our companies to the current technology for alarm signaling which is ,and will be for the foreseeable future, direct IP signaling.

Our industry is spending lots of money trying to get dialers to work on VOIP, it is wasted effort, Stop Dialing, get connected. Plan for tomorrow not yesterday.

I do not represent any equipment Manufacturers or service providers. My opinions are solely my own.

Mike Fletcher

Heeth LLC

Fire Alarm Training and Consulting

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Ken,

I read these comments regarding VoIP with great interest every time you send them down. It seems some people understand that POTS connections are NOT reliable in the future, have accepted this fact, and moved on to IP/Cellular/Radio solutions. Others are trying to avoid investing in their RMR base by continuing to install systems that connect to a phone line, not educating their existing customer base on the issue, and migrating them to a solution that does not rely on POTS. I would imagine that in the not too distant future whether or not your customers are primarily on POTS is going to become a point of negotiation during an acquisition, and may lower the value of your accounts if the company taking them over has to convert them to modern technologies.

A related note regarding Honeywell (and most manufacturers at this point), they do not support VoIP on their legacy products, but they have an entire line of panels that have IP and Cellular communications built in. They have also provided a solution to convert their legacy panels to modern communication technologies.

The future is IP/Cellular/Radio, there isn’t any way around it. We identified this two years ago, and have been solely installing systems using modern communications since.

Josh Manring

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Ken

So far I have not had any problems with any VOIPs other than Comcast (a few years back) but other than that no issues whatsoever,

Remember FIOS, Comcast, and Cablevision (optimum) are “managed” phone networks. But for example Vonage is not. Guess what, I am even able to download or upload panels on Vonage phone to customers who are connected to Comcast or Optimum and we all know that for uploading/downloading you need really good connection.

Separately what bothers me with manufacturers is that manufacturers are bragging that you cannot use VOIP because panels will not be able to dial out correctly etc. Why shouldn’t they? After all you will buy, most likely, their cell unit and AUTOMATICALLY they become your “silent” partner and collect RMR just by you having the cell unit enrolled.

But, what really angers me the most is why they have to be a “silent partner” when you will be using internet communicator?

This should be direct peer to peer connection not through (for example) Alarm Net. They are absolutely not needed at all.

I’m sure that if this was feasible we would all be dialing through Alarm-Net or other manufacturers long time ago but it was not. So why in the world would make Alarm-Net and others our “silent partners” and give them a cut? I do understand the cell communications, but not the internet this is absolutely exploitation.

I think there is one manufacturer so far that you can use to communicate using internet communicator without going through manufacturers servers but I have investigated it because I don’t use them it is DSC and their module is DSC T-Link TL250.

hss