Security First Networks Releases Supervised Alarm Communicator

Security First Networks (SFN) has announced that it is the first manufacturer to release a supervised Internet alarm communicator that will interface to any alarm panel and does not require a proprietary central station receiver.

The Security Port system consists of two components, the SP-1 alarm panel interface and the SP-15/16 central station receiver interface connected to a PC. Utilizing SNMP, a broadly accepted communications protocol for managing network appliances, the Security Port system fully integrates network communications with central station automation by piping network notifications directly into the alarm receiver in Contact ID. With a full OSI protocol stack, the system avoids critical "many-to-one" bottleneck failures such as the ISP reassigning the receiver IP to someone else. Other internet communicators assume a static IP will not change, however, this is a frequent occurrence in WAN operations, and it will cause logistical problems for an alarm companies analogous to the telco provider changing telephone prefixes or the implementation of VoIP.

By including DNS in the IP stack, the Security Port communicator can send notifications routed by Domain Name Service, in addition to IP routing. If the static IP is changed by the ISP, the DNS routed notification will still arrive, allowing the alarm company time to remedy the problem. Further, the SP-1 can be configured to send notifications to multiple IP recipients, providing multiple redundancy in the network communications path. SNMP is a powerful network management protocol, extending the capability of central station monitoring to supervision of network appliances such as DVRs. It also allows standard network management systems to supervise the alarm panel communicator.

Additional information can be found at http://sfnet.ca, and the system is available now from Security First Networks.