jimcarter

Last week I was involved in a product refresh with the senior engineers of one of our UK National security companies. We covered off our new SPT.6 hardware in both its “Pro” and “Mini” versions which was all very nice, but it was the 3G capability of the new devices that drew much attention and I thought it would be useful to share some of the topics we covered. When you are in the business of data communications you have to constantly revisit and re-evaluate the old technologies, how they compare with the new and what operational differences there may be. Looking back on my piece written around radio installations I realise that some of what I wrote at the time (3 years ago) may not be relevant to today! What is apparent is that the wireless data network is improving with the release of 3G and 4G. Incidentally I saw a development 5G device on the BBC news website last week, its worth looking up. I am not about to go as far as saying that wireless will take over from broadband anytime soon, it will be quite a few years before mobile communications will mirror the last mile resilience and data speeds of a fixed line circuit. But from what I have seen, 3G is enough to consider radio only communications favourably for critical data transmission where circumstances require it and with a potential to reduce reporting times below what we would consider a 2G device capable of. Let us take a look at some basic comparisons between 2G & 3G. The switch from analogue GSM services to digital took place in the 90’s or in generation terms, from 1G to 2G. 2G was designed as a voice service with a basic data transmission capability, primarily for text and very limited Internet connectivity. Bandwidth is low but suited to applications where the packet data is small, such as a poll or alarm message in an alarm transmission system. However error correction is quite poor and inefficient and it is often necessary for devices to resend and validate data that has not been correctly received. This can lead to extended download times or a “timeout” to occur where the devices can no longer continue to communicate in the same “session”. This means the communication process has to begin again. 2G requires the last mile (between the base station and the module) to be stable, reliable and have a very good quality of service. 3G differs in that the service has been constructed around mobile data operations as well as voice. It came into its own when the rise in smart phone demand exploded. It is a protocol that has vastly improved error correction (less retries and “timeouts”), improved building penetration and at least double the download speeds. Resilience is improved too; a fall back to Edge (2.5G; or the stop-gap between 2G & 3G) and GPRS when 3G is not available maintains data connectivity. In operation, 3G (so my Development team tell me) is like DAB radio in that if you have a “signal” (literally any signal) it will work, where as 2G is more akin to Long Wave radio where signal and direction are required to obtain service. Translate this into a Security application and we find that our usual indicators are not entirely valid. For example signal strength has been used as a guide to 2G service availability (although not an entirely reliable one). On a scale of 1 to 10, anything indicating 3 or below could suggest a potential problem. In 3G terms, signal strength is meaningless. If the module has a good connection it will work as long as that connection is “up” regardless of signal, whether it be a 1 or a 10. How do we survey a site of this is the case? It can be argued that a survey is obsolete in its own right as the device has an ability to intelligently roam between service providers and incorporates a secondary roaming feature that can hop between technologies and frequencies (which makes jamming almost impossible by the way). But there are tools we can utilise and what is even better they are free! The network providers publish coverage maps on their websites. Some include service availability notifications as well. Or there are Apps that you can download to your Smartphone such as “Open Signal”. This App uses data gathered from its users to populate a service coverage map based on actual availability data as opposed to what the operators would like you to believe. It constantly updates, shows local serving cells and the more users there are the better the data mapping becomes. Building a next generation mobile data module into a security product has several challenges. Cost is the leading factor. New generations of devices carry a premium and it has only just become viable for WebWayOne to incorporate a 3G module as standard and retain a competitively priced SPT. Migrating to 4G will come but it will be the module price that determines when this will be. Next are the changes in software. You cannot simply bolt a 3G module onto a piece of hardware and expect it to work. The Development team have to “tame the beast”, working with the modules design teams; not only to make it work, but to maximise the features that the module can support, for example the ability for the module to manage the SIM cards connectivity to the network. Operationally the results are quite staggering. 3G coverage is excellent and the download speeds for a 650K file are 25 minutes on 2G compared to 6 to 8 minutes over 3G. Let me provide you with some hard information. I have two test SPTs at home, both are operating in radio only mode, both are configured for a 3-minute reporting time, have the same software and a Telefonica Roaming SIM card installed. I can share with you the comparison over the past month of testing that is revealing. My home is a particularly good testing ground as I live in a rural part of Berkshire with very poor radio reception and just two providers available, O2 & Vodafone. Below is the diagnostics I can retrieve from the SPT showing 3G operation on a 900 frequency band with a signal strength of just 2. And here are the comparisons in signal strength over the past month (scale 0 to 10 where 10 is the maximum signal). You will see they are very low, generally below 3. 3G Signal 2G Signal The 2G device is obviously struggling to maintain a connection and since the 22nd November it has lost registration to the core network to all services, whereas the 3G device has been online all of the time. This is reflected in the circuit availability. 2G network availability for the month is 81% 3G network availability is 99.79% When you translate the availability figures into the number of failures that would have been reported to the end user the scale of the difference is aparent. The 3G device would have reported just 3 fails (of which 2 of these were during tests I carried out with the device), compared to 385 fails from the 2G device. I would not advocate rushing out and installing 3G only with 3 minute reporting times or consider replacing broadband devices with radio only. But certainly where longer reporting times are concerned and a landline is not available or impractical then the stability figures we are seeing gives confidence. Coupled with a fixed line circuit, especially Broadband provides an incredibly robust solution. Looking to the future, the speeds that are being achieved and the reliability of the circuits demonstrate that high bandwidth applications can access the 3G to. Where Imaging or CCTV is concerned the speed in which you can transmit images to an operator is critical and therfore 3G is a viable backup path to broadband. So to conclude. 3G:- Supports faster Upload/Download speeds - future applications such as Imaging and CCTV have access to a viable backup network Has better building penetration Signal strength is not as operationally critical Will automatically drop to Edge or 2G if a 3G service is unavailable Frequency hopping renders jamming almost impossible Global SIM cards provide additional resilience in network roaming Additional software controls on the module allow for intelligent roaming (as opposed to letting the SIM card and network operators determine connectivity) Network coverage is excellent, before the ability to roam providers comes into the equation But remember; it is the GSM module and not the SIM that determines what technology can be accessed.

Thanks James. Where 3G is available (pretty much everywhere) the results are very good. I'm putting together another piece based on 3G which I'll post in the next week or so.

Drop me an email via TSI, be happy to show you SIA3 + UDL very simply on your Gal. You won't need the Dial Capture.

Interesting that the Risco cloud service was disrupted by a problem with the Microsoft Azure cloud service and so I thought this would be an opportunity to describe what we as Alarm Transmission Service providers (ATSP) “do” and how we got here. An ATSP is not just about providing a piece of hardware that attaches a fire or intruder system to a network. It’s also the receiving equipment at the ARC, redundancy and resilience of that equipment, the provision of suitable SIM cards for radio network coverage, technical support for engineers in the field and for the ARC operation, disaster recovery when networks fail and continued development of systems and processes to cope with network evolution and new services. WebWayOne began trading as a designer and manufacturer of data communications equipment in 2000, before the company evolved into an ATSP and right now I think I can be bold enough to say it’s in the top 3 in the UK in terms of connections as we approach 50,000 in number. Of those top 3, we are the only one to have our own hardware and software development team and retain all manufacturing within the UK. Our core team came from a company called Controlware. A UK subsidiary of a German firm that the team ran from the early 90’s through to 1999 when we sold our share back to the parent company. But we kept the UK development group who were designing ISDN based communications equipment, which included a terminal adapter called a “WebWay”. In those days the Internet and World Wide Web was in its infancy and the only way to get on it was to use dial-up technology. Dual path transmission was nothing new to us as at Controlware. Through the 90’s we had been providing leased line backup services for blue chip Finance and Network providers to ensure their data networks kept running and we practised remote maintenance and diagnostics on this equipment to. So it was quite a shock when we realised that the Fire and Security Industry did little of either and was clinging onto out dated data communications using PSTN and modems. It was quite an achievement for our small team to win the contract to supply the National Lottery with ISDN terminal adapters for 30,000 lottery machines and the management platform to maintain the operational system. We also supplied Vision Systems (now Xtralis) with ISDN TAs for Adpro Fast Scan, VU and Trace products before broadband became widely available. BT RedCARE was “the brand” at the time and we incorporated the AIMs protocol into our ISDN terminal adapters and became the largest supplier of ISDN equipment to RedCARE. But then, as now, we were looking to the future and we could see that Broadband and radio services would become the norm and we set about building an “IP” based ATS. RedCARE were not interested, wishing to stick with PSTN and cast doubt over the reliability of Broadband whilst the BT parent was selling and promoting the service to Businesses and you and I alike. We were flabbergasted, but we decided it was time to go our own way. 2005 saw the first major roll out of an IP based ATS when we delivered a system to Dixons. It is still in place today. As for today we have 30 employees covering Product & Software Development, Production, Sales & Marketing and Technical Support. We have operations in Scandinavia, Europe and recently Australia. Looking after these systems is a huge responsibility and building in redundancy and resilience to cope with the type of system failure that Risco experienced is just part of the day job. As is providing a level of technical excellence and expertise that takes problem ownership away from the on site engineer. Our support team are 7 in total and they have to understand not only the way our hardware operates, but also how it interacts with 3rd party equipment that we have integrated into the ATS. So that means documenting and learning the programming and troubleshooting of our partners’ equipment. Identifying trends in network behaviour through support often leads to discussions with the network providers. In providing a SIM card with a device that supports radio is not just about cost or service availability. It’s also about support and operational considerations. WebWay have in excess of 40,000 SIM cards in operation with Telefonica. That gives us huge experience and breadth of knowledge in how the radio network operates and is evolving. More importantly it means we are engaged at a very high technical level that has (in the past) lead to us identifying problems with network delivery that Telefonica have taken note of and fixed. They have reciprocated in providing us advice and guidance when we are developing software that maximises the use of the roaming capabilities of their SIMs whilst not disrupting the network or causing problems elsewhere. Having our own developers is a huge asset. It means we can react very quickly to add in new features to the product range in both hardware and software terms. We were the first to roll out large IP/Radio based ATS services, the first to introduce integrated remote diagnostics and UDL support over the ATS and we have become the first to deliver 3G as a standard service for the radio path. But we don’t stop there and the exciting thing about having a development team is to turn ideas into reality and then deploy and see them in operation. From an Operational perspective I am certainly proud of the fact that we are a privately owned UK company that is able to manufacture technically advanced telecommunications equipment at home in the UK and at competitive prices. I do not foresee this situation changing any time soon. So being an ATS provider is not simply about making a printed circuit board that fits into an Intruder or Fire panel, that’s just one small part of the equation. It’s about service delivery from the protected premises right to the ARC. Future proofing our systems through strong development and innovation keep us ahead of the competition whilst ensuring that operational systems are robust and ready to cope with the worst that can be thrown at them, and then recover gracefully. I almost forgot adhering to Standards, but that’s another story.