Utah InterLinx Finds The Visibility They Need With T/Mon SLIM

Warren Stringham
Utah InterLinx

The pioneer spirit is still alive and well in our country thanks to companies like Utah InterLinx and people like Warren Stringham. While most of us take for granted things like cell phone service and the Internet, these services are still unavailable to a large number of citizens living in the more rural areas of the United States.

Utah InterLinx is an emerging Competitive Access Provider (CAP) whose focus is developing a fiber optic network infrastructure in rural markets. Having recently designed and deployed over 150 miles of high-capacity, high-bandwidth fiber optic cable in the Southwestern Utah region, Utah InterLinx is providing a data-highway through which carriers and service providers can provide "tier 1" competitive, protected telecommunications services to "tier 3&4" markets.

Providing access to rural markets is not without its drawbacks. Due to the remote nature of these communities, the incumbent-telco fiber line often terminates upon reaching them-if it reaches them at all. As a result, fiber cuts can be catastrophic. Because of this, Stringham, the VP of Network Engineering for Utah InterLinx, recognized early on the need for a dependable network monitoring solution which would allow him the visibility necessary to properly manage his network.

One of InterLinx' Fiber and
Services Node Installations

At a recent DPS Telecom Factory Training Event we sat down with Stringham as he explained why he chose DPS for his monitoring needs. Stringham remarked that while having "built the system with as much redundancy and protection in it as they could," it only took a couple of potentially damaging outages to show the need for a monitoring solution. "A car hit a power pole and took it down, cutting our fiber in the process. In another instance, someone playing with a shotgun got bored and took their frustration out on one of our aerial lines. Fortunately, we were able to find out about each event very quickly and prevent these cuts from affecting our clients. I live 300 miles away and knew we needed a better monitoring system than what we had in place so I called up some friends in the industry and asked them what they used for their monitoring solutions. They told me they used a product called the NetGuardian but they couldn't remember who made it, so I went on the web and found DPS."

While the majority of Utah InterLinx' fiber loops are in the Southern Utah city of St. George, Stringham, himself, lives in the northern city of Salt Lake City - some 300 miles away. "After those and other events, I recognized the value and necessity of having some kind of 'pro-active' monitoring system in place. At first we were so busy trying to get the network up, functioning, and generating revenue, monitoring wasn't our first priority. After the first fiber cut I began investigating other systems, but they were just not capable of accomplishing what I needed to do" said Stringham. "But when I was able to contact Rick Dodd, DPS Telecom's Director of Sales, it became apparent very quickly that this solution was going to work for us."

Rick was able to demonstrate a product that appeared to be custom tailored for the very situation Stringham found himself in -- the T/Mon SLIM. With the T/Mon SLIM Stringham is now able to monitor his remote sites over 300 miles away via the web. The T/Mon SLIM's Web Browser Interface lets you securely connect to your alarm system from any computer. Remote web access lets on-call technicians connect to the system to acknowledge alarms and drill down on alarms without extra software or another interface to learn.

Optical Transport, Multi-services
platform, fiber optic cross-connect
and copper (TDM) distribution inside
one of InterLinx' COs.

"Prior to buying the T/Mon SLIM my network monitoring solution was an associate who lived in St. George with keys to the huts," Stringham mused. "Now, thanks to the T/Mon SLIM, those days are a thing of the past." With T/Mon SLIM, round-the-clock notification alarms are sent to any e-mail or pager-capable cell phone. Additionally, T/Mon SLIM's automatic alarm escalation ensures alarms aren't left unnoticed; if the on-call tech doesn't acknowledge an alarm, T/Mon SLIM will first page the tech again, and if there's still no response, T/Mon SLIM will send an email to a supervisor. "I have techs down in St George who need to be notified immediately when events occur, and the T/Mon SLIM does exactly that."

The new T/Mon SLIM Remote Alarm Monitoring system from DPS Telecom was designed specifically to give small networks the power of centralized alarm monitoring. With a small company the cost barriers to setting up a 24/7 manned NOC can prevent them from having any alarm visibility at all. The T/Mon SLIM solves this problem and offers an extremely affordable solution with capacity to grow. With the ability to monitor up to 64 individual network devices and up to 10,000 alarm points in SNMP, TL1, ASCII and over 25 standard, proprietary and legacy protocols, the T/Mon SLIM ensures compatibly with future expansion. "Currently we have three core sites but there are new elements being deployed almost every month and we're continuing to grow. DPS allows compatibility with future products and the visibility we need to properly manage them." With the T/Mon SLIM, DPS is able to provide the visibility solution managers of small networks need without sacrificing the features and benefits of a full-blown alarm monitoring solution.

T/Mon SLIM: local/regional monitoring that you control

The new T/Mon SLIM Remote Alarm Monitoring System puts control over your alarms directly into your hands. T/Mon SLIM is a new model of the T/Mon Remote Alarm Monitoring System, scaled to the needs of small, local and regional networks.

Cost-effective and easy to install, T/Mon SLIM puts high-quality network alarm monitoring within the reach of any company and any maintenance department.

See Full Specifications of the T/Mon SLIM Remote Alarm Monitoring System