SilentKnight IP Alarm System Resiliency on Disaster Recovery and ISP changes User Manual
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FireLite IP Alarm System description
FireLite IP Alarm System uses the Internet as the main communication path between the traditional Alarm
Panel and the Central Monitoring Station (CMS from now on). As such, two new elements are added into
the system:
• The IPDACT is FireLite’s IP Communicator. This element is connected to the Fire Panel DACT
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The IPDACT formats the telephone alarm into IP and sends it over the Internet to the CMS.
• The VisorALARM is FireLite’s IP Receiver. It is installed in the Network Server room, at the
CMS private network, and it connects to the Automation Server over a serial line. The
VisorALARM reformats the IP alarm received from the IPDACTs into a well known alarm format
(Ademco-685, Sur-Gard and Radionics emulation) and retransmits it to the Automation Server.
Figure 1. FireLite IP Alarm network diagram
Figure 1 illustrates the basic IP Alarm System setup for Disaster Recovery. A secondary CMS takes over
the Alarm Service when IPDACTs have lost the IP contact to their primary CMS. VisorALARM receivers
can be clustered together leading to more complex architectures for Disaster Recovery. These architectures
are out of the scope of this document, nor shown in the Figure.
The IP communication between IPDACTs and their Main and Backup VisorALARM is carried over the
Teldat ARLY
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protocol, which offers:
• Connectionless transmission through low size packets. This protocol is fully adapted to the Alarm
Monitoring transmission pattern.
• Security: Through packet encryption and other advanced techniques for the system protection
against replicas and against man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Reliability: Through IP packet sequencing and retransmissions.
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DACT: Digital Alarm Communicator Transmitter. It is the Alarm Panel module in charge of transmitting
the alarms over the external telephone line.
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ARLY: Alarm ReLaY. It is the Teldat proprietary IP communication protocol for the Alarm Monitoring
Service.