How to Remotely Monitor Your Trackside Cabinets & Telecom Sites

Transcription

1 How to Remotely Monitor Your Trackside Cabinets & Telecom Sites DPS Telecom

2 Why should I listen to this guy? 11 years with a remote-monitoring manufacturer Interviewed our rail clients

3 What I learned recently: Rail company legal departments are concerned about security, too.

4 Rail clients Railroad BNSF New York City Transit Transit BART CN Rail Long Island Railroad Rail New Jersey Transit Rail Grand Trunk Western Railroad Railroad Railway

5 Telecom monitoring is universal 1. Telecom 2. Power/Oil/Gas 3. Rail 4. Police/Fire/Safety 5. Government & Military

6 Why is monitoring so important? The network primarily supports telecommunications for dispatchers. "We have a lot of unmanned locations. We need to have visibility of all our field equipment." "We move information as well as moving trains.

7 Does this sound like you? "The way I found out something went down was I got a phone call, and I had lots of them. How will I satisfy mandates? Monitoring isn't my only job! A few years ago, the way I found out something went down was I got a phone call, and I had lots of them. They were constant, every week. It was a very crude form of monitoring.

8 What if you could be proactive instead? Know what's failing Know your environmentals Know your security status We know the environmental conditions of each site - temperature, humidity, power, door status. We know if a door got left open or if there's a possible intrusion. We ve gotten to the point now through monitoring where, when I do have something go down, I m calling the local staff to tell them it s down. They haven t seen it yet. Most of the time, I know about it before they do, which is the right approach. We are proactive versus reactive. And now, I might get one callout every month and a half. Now, it s just not very often that we have these problems.

9 What if you could offer better service? Improved safety Fewer delays Improved systems (ex. PA, ticketing...) "The project is going to have a big impact on our customers - we'll have an enhanced public address system, an enhanced ticketing system, and enhanced safety. We are just scratching the surface of what we can do. We are looking at advancing that to a point that benefits more than just our department. Right now, our department benefits from what we are monitoring. We want to continue to expand what we are monitoring for our business use, but we also want to provide more for everyone else.

10 Basic Monitoring Architecture 1. RTUs 2. RTU inputs 3. RTU direct notifications 4. Masters 5. Protocols 6. Master displays/notifications

11 11 Real-World Tips for your Remote Monitoring

12 1) Know EVERYTHING about your environmentals Temperature Humidity Power Door Status Motion/Intrusion We know the environmental conditions of each site - temperature, humidity, power, door status. We know if a door got left open or if there's a possible intrusion.

13 2) Get notifications wherever you are NOC displays Text messages Mobile web / app Voice Calls Now we are to the point where we get alerts on everything. I get alerts on my cell phone and we know what s going on everywhere.

14 3) ANYTHING can be monitored Propane can vaporize based on the area of the liquid. The bigger your surface area, the more that can vaporize. So by controlling the propane levels in all of the tanks, and keeping them all even near 50%, you maximize your surface area when you get into the colder months. As you get closer to the point where propane doesn t vaporize as efficiently, you still have all that surface area to vaporize propane and avoid using heaters. Our situation is unique when it comes to propane because most places are warmer and don t have a problem with propane not vaporizing.

15 4) Buy from a partner Your network is unique Some monitoring customization is needed Don't get caught by the Solution Stack Hack Being able to work with the engineering guys has been amazing. They have been able to design exactly what we need.

16 5) Monitor site weather before truck rolls Install weather stations (a sensor bundle) Check for snow, wind, rain We are looking into weather stations at our communication sites. That benefits our department by giving us a view of the conditions at a remote site before we even try to dispatch people. Instead of 6 hours to find out you can t install something because winds are too high or there s too much snow or whatever the condition is out there, we don t waste that trip.

17 6) Know when legacy tech becomes a liability - and when it's an opportunity Don't reflexively replace older devices Choose flexible new monitoring Don't buy faster than you can install Up to that point, we relied on a legacy monitoring system to give us some visibility of our transit lines. This system came with one of our rail lines. At that time, it was the only transit line that we had monitoring on." - "The technology is constantly chaanging. It's hard to keep pace. That's why one of our rules is that, as far as technology goes, we don't buy more than we can install." - "We are migrating off legacy equipment, but there's some that we want to retain." - "We needed a telecommunications-type alarm system that was carrier-grade and able to handle legacy protocols."

18 7) Monitor your tower lights Lights on Lights off Replacement required "We have 2 microwave towers with FAA-required lighting. The RTUs monitor the lights for us. They give us real-time information if the lights go on at night and turn off in the day or if a light bulb burns out."

19 8) Leverage automatic alarm notifications - with escalations Get notifications to your phone for your alarms Acknowledge promptly or notification escalates Choose alarms carefully to avoid desensitization "If people in the office don't acknowledge an alarm within a certain length of time, it will notify everybody out in the field - management, supervisors, technicians - to know what's happening in their areas. - "We are looking to take the alarm master's functionality and tie it into the company's system. This would provide notification to all our techs as needed."

20 9) Plan for reasonable future growth Choose remotes that accommodate forecasted growth for a few years Don't waste budget on overkill RTUs with expandability reduce your risk "A small office might only have six alarm points, so a small remote would cover it for right now. But you might want to put in a larger RTU with more capacity to handle the alarms you anticipate having in a year's time."

21 10) Plan your goals first - then make budget concessions What are you trying to accomplish? What equipment will get you there? Consider reliability, easy configuration, & usability "My first concern is the technical capability - does it have the capacity and provide the proper functionality to do what we need. If we look at the budget first, we're limiting ourselves. I look for reliability, ease of use and configuration, and also for equipment that can be used in a variety of environments for different applications."

22 11) How will you learn how to use your system? Where is tech support based? Is tech support free? Can you get training? How much does it cost? "Customer support is an important issue. Being able to get tech support by is a real advantage - I'm often too busy to pick up a phone. But it's also good to be able to pick up a phone and get an answer really quick." - "I learned some things I'm having the call center people use, like viewing site statistics to monitor specific sites and equipment, which helps us trace a series of alarms to the common cause. Before, we wouldn't be able to identify that.

23 Telecom Sites vs. Trackside Cabinets Temperature control Available rackspace Amount of gear Type of gear Attractiveness to thieves

24 Final Thoughts

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